


Bellwether

by mylordshesacactus



Category: RWBY
Genre: 1870s Sheep Wars of the American Southwest?, Alternate Universe - Western, F/F, Fantastic Racism, Gen, Historical References, Is There An AO3 Tag For Highway Robbery, Mutual Pining, Slice of Life, Useless Lesbians, Vignettes, ah yes that classic lesbian pining trope the [checks notes]
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:55:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 27,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25001260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mylordshesacactus/pseuds/mylordshesacactus
Summary: Bellwether (noun) : The leading sheep of a flock. In politics: A region in which political tendencies will map to tendencies on the larger scale; a community to watch. Colloquially: One who takes the initiative; leader; one who sets trends or directions that others follow. An indicator of change; a predictor of the direction of a society.It's a sorry state of affairs when Robyn Hill's dusty little single-bit saloon is the closest thing the isolated mining town of Mantle has to a beating heart; but that doesn't make it any less true. With increasingly territorial cattle barons on one side, distant Dust magnates on the other, lawkeepers and supply lines in the pocket of Atlas, and very little left for anyone else, Mantle folk have to stick together--or die alone.There isnothingRobyn wouldn't do to keep that from happening.
Relationships: Robyn Hill/Fiona Thyme
Comments: 170
Kudos: 154





	1. Mysterious Strangers Step Into A Saloon

The sudden silence that fell over Robyn’s tavern was anything but natural.

She didn’t tense. That was good policy regardless—never let them see they got to you, acting intimidated lost the battle for structure before it began—but in this case, she knew _exactly_ what had caused conversation to dry up like cutting off a rushing faucet. Truth be told, she’d been expecting it before now.

“Clover!” she called brightly, not looking up from the pint glass she’d deliberately picked up to start cleaning when she realized who was about thirty seconds from walking through her doors. “Don’t usually see _you_ around here. Let me know what changed so I can fix it.” 

“Robyn!” he greeted her, matching her jovial lightness exactly. The infuriating thing was, from him it sounded _genuine._ “Delightful as ever. Don’t suppose you’d be willing to pour a round for my people?”

“Twelve lien for a pint, whiskey’s fourteen, we’ll chat if you want something harder, and you’re paying up front,” she rattled off, still ever so casually refusing to look at him. “I don’t run tabs for folks who only show up when they feel like it.”

“We’re here for a week, Robyn,” he pointed out. “And we’ll need a place to stay.”

“The Apricot’s just up the road,” she said shortly.

Clover flashed her a charming smile. “I’m not lost. _Harriet!_ Sit down already, you’re off-duty. Relax.”

“I’m never off-duty around here,” muttered Harriet Bree, but she dropped into a barstool next to her captain without protest.

Elm Edern, sitting down much more emphatically at Bree’s left, rubbed her hands together. “Well, _I_ am!” she announced. “What have you got to _eat?”_

“You’d get a better answer if you’d dropped in at an actual mealtime,” Robyn tossed back; but it was, in fact, a perfectly fair question. So she relented, “Sausage, corn bread, cold pheasant; and there’s some beef stew keeping warm.”

Elm’s eyes gleamed. “I haven’t had good pheasant in who _knows_ how long.”

“Hey now.” Clover’s even, deliberate playfulness made Robyn’s hackles prickle. “She never promised _good.”_

That got a sensible chuckle from exactly one person, but Elm was generally a good-natured sort. Ugh. The tall one—Vine—indicated he’d have the same thing, and Clover rested his elbow on the bar, relaxed.

“Order a drink, Hare.” There was amusement in his voice, but it was still an order.

Harriet shot Robyn a smile that was more exasperated than forced and tossed some lien down on the bar. “I’m cheap,” she said, voice dry. “Whatever you’ve got on the bottom shelf.”

Robyn glanced at the money. “I don’t give change,” she said shortly.

Rolling her eyes, Harriet just said, _“Fine,_ whatever. Keep the change.” Robyn took the lien and traded her a random bottle of rotgut without a word.

She was about to turn back to Clover when someone coughed further up the bar. Looking up in surprise Robyn found a very young woman with impressive branching antlers hovering awkwardly, glancing between the two. Forcing a reassuring smile on her face, Robyn waved the girl forward.

“Little young to be in here this early in the afternoon, Olive,” she pointed out. “Something I can help you with?”

Olive shook herself slightly. “Yes, ma’am. I...my father said I should ask. If we could buy some of your cornmeal off you? He says, we’re not asking for credit or charity, Miss Hill.”

Feeling Clover’s focus sharpening behind her, Robyn fought to keep her ratcheting tension from leaking into her voice. It wasn’t a hard question to answer. “Of course. Tell your father there’s no shame in an open tab. Or in charity, for that matter, but I know he’s got his pride. Ten pounds?”

Olive, despite Robyn’s smooth matter-of-fact response, was flushed. “Yes, ma’am. I mean...what would that come out to—actually, no, I’m sorry. Can I just get a hundred fifty lien’s worth? We can...we don’t need more than that now that I think about it.”

The truth, which was written all over her face, was that they couldn’t afford more than two hundred lien and almost certainly couldn’t afford that much as it was. There was a reason they’d come to her, and not the Schnee-run general store. The man probably couldn’t get anything more on credit, not without running up against truly crushing interest; and that the SDC store overpriced everything was hardly a state secret.

Joanna, whose ability to hear what was said up front while she was elsewhere was rivaled only by May’s powers of what Robyn genuinely believed to be omniscience, had already shown up with a ten-pound sack of cornmeal. She set it down on the bar and winked at Olive before vanishing back into the kitchen to feed their uninvited...customers. “Well,” Robyn said. “Take the ten pounds for now, that’ll run you a hundred and forty lien. Tell your mother I’m here if she runs low again.”

May was going to skin her alive—the fair price, already selling at-cost, would have been one hundred _eighty_ lien—but they’d make do. 

Robyn casually counted out Olive’s change and handed sixty lien back to the kid, whose visible relief was more than worth the money. “Take care, Olive.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Don’t forget your change.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something give a violent twitch in Harriet’s temple.

The polite thing to do at this point would be to get Clover’s order, so Robyn turned pointedly away to polish some brasswork that didn’t remotely need it instead. The terse silence swelled at her back, getting darker and denser every moment; thunderheads over the mountains, ready at any minute to burst.

“Cheerful place,” commented a voice by the door. “Ah...any chance a guy could get some stew around here?”

 _“We have actual food!”_ shouted a voice from the back room.

“Ignore her,” Robyn told the new arrival, sparing him a wry smile. Marrow Amin was no different from the rest of them at the end of the day; but he had an earnest, well-meaning belief in helping people and didn’t make half as much an ass of himself whenever he opened his mouth. “Our delicate desert flower back there objects to stew on moral grounds.”

That came of having left some big east-coast family business behind with nothing but a well-bred horse and the change in her pocket with absolutely no idea how to function outside a city. The kind of roadside inns May Marigold had been able to afford before finally reaching the little town of Mantle and simply not being able to go further served stews that could tarnish raw Dust from ten paces. The fact that Robyn _understood_ her sworn oath to never taste beef stew again did not make her violent crusade against the concept of slow-boiled meats less funny.

“If you’re sick of stew I can get you some pork sausage and cheese,” Robyn relented. “But don’t let May scare you off. I don’t serve slop here.”

“...Right,” said Marrow. “Uh, sausage sounds great, actually. Can I get a beer?”

“As soon as you can grow stubble to go with it,” laughed Elm. Marrow pouted as he slumped onto a stool next to Clover, rubbing at his chin. 

Clover glanced between them, jaw still set; he hadn’t lost that sharp look in his eye since Olive opened her mouth, and he’d been watching that exchange like a hawk. 

With an air of _incredibly_ casual disinterest, he commented, “I didn’t know you were moonlighting as a general store these days.” When Robyn ignored him entirely in favor of pouring Marrow a drink, his voice softened. “Hey. That was a good thing you just did. I know you’re not _actually_ breaking any trade regulations.”

It took all of Robyn’s self-control, but she managed to avoid crushing Amin’s glass in her bare hand.

“Of course not.” Because, of course, you needed to be licensed and registered in order to act as a storefront. And there were a thousand different laws about pricing and supply-chain fees—all of them tailor-drafted by SDC lobbyists to make it functionally impossible for them to be undercut. Inns, saloons, and restaurants fell under different regulations, which meant Robyn was safe—for now. “That would be illegal.” 

Clover gave her a long look. “I’m just saying you should be careful. I want to see you around for a long time yet, Robyn.”

“Not sure what I need to be careful of,” she replied, finally turning to look him in the eye. _“I_ haven’t made any enemies. But maybe I have a few I didn’t _know about.”_

He sighed. “I’m not your enemy, Robyn. Look, can we not do this? There are five of us, we need room and board for a week and stabling for our horses. Think you can help me with that?”

Robyn resisted the urge to grind her teeth. “Three hundred lien even, each, for the week. Three-ten if I’m feeding your horses. Or go up the street to the Apricot.”

“Typically, a reputable establishment will offer a lower price for female guests,” Clover pointed out.

“Don’t start,” she warned him.

That was standard practice, and for damn good reason. The Apricot charged women alone 250 lien for a week; Robyn charged 225 specifically to undercut them at nearly a loss, because she trusted the slimy bastards about as far as she could pick up their whole gaudy building and throw it.

“It’s a fair point,” said Harriet.

 _“Civilians,”_ was all Robyn said as a retort. She didn’t have to go for the pistol at her side; the day she had to actually _draw_ a gun to keep control in her own establishment was the day something had gone very wrong. She just crossed her arms, glared Bree down, and turned away to viciously rub fingerprints off a brass tap. “That price is offered for safety’s sake. You _own_ this town; pay your bills or get out.” 

“All right.” Clover held up his hands, soft and soothing. “All _right._ I was only joking. Easy. We just need a comfortable place to sleep while we’re in town. Work with me, Robyn. All I want is—”

Robyn’s patience, already fraying, finally snapped.

 _“Cut the shit, Clover!”_ She whirled on him, throwing down her rag with an audible crack. “What do you _want_ from me?! Five _years_ since you showed up here on that fucking stallion wearing _that_ —” She gestured toward the golden four-leaf clover on his chest, the sheriff’s mark that, _gag,_ matched his custom spurs “—and you’ve _never_ tried to rent a room from me. Why now, what changed, and where do you get the _gall_ to pretend _I’m_ unreasonable for wanting to know what’s going on!”

Clover still had his hands up. That didn’t mean much. He was fast enough to be dangerous, and Robyn wasn’t stupid; the lasso ever so casually slung over his shoulder was more accessible the closer his hands were to it.

Bastard really thought he was _subtle._

He’d made a shining reputation in these parts over the years—the handsome young sheriff with ocean-colored eyes, decked out in bleached leathers on a white charger, who didn’t carry a gun, only fine silk rope. He’d be a folk hero if only he was on the other side of the law. 

To plenty of people, he was already. Usually to the the kind of people with money, from big, well-established railroad hubs; ones to whom “robbery” meant a cutpurse and not the slow, soul-crushing bleeding away of a man’s entire life coin by coin, over years of trying to pay off debts he hadn’t earned with labor he could never be paid enough for, watching the light drain from his eyes until there was nothing left but dust.

“There’s been some trouble,” Clover said, slow and so damn reasonable. “Gangs targeting small-time taphouses in isolated towns around Solitas. And frankly, I _do_ understand why people around here don’t really trust us. We’re outsiders; you’re not. We want to try to repair that gap, Robyn. And we want to be here, on hand, if anything happens and you need support.”

 _Bullshit,_ whispered every instinct in Robyn’s body. Out loud, she ground out, _“I_ don’t happen to trust you either.”

He gave another one of those awful disarming smiles. “Well,” he said, spreading his hands good-naturedly. “We’ll just have to prove ourselves, won’t we? It’d be easier if we had the chance.”

Robyn’s eyes narrowed. She didn’t accept the proverbial olive branch; but she didn’t throw him out, either.

Marrow looked up from his sausage, grinning slightly at the exchange. At least his tail had untucked itself. _"Probably_ no point in asking whether there’s a discount for hardworking local lawmen?”

If Robyn’s face wasn’t answer enough, there was a dark chuckle down the bar.

“You really are new here, huh kid.”

Robyn rolled her eyes. “Shut up, Qrow.”

Qrow Branwen sarcastically toasted her with a glass of what she knew perfectly well to be almost entirely lemonade. With a generous shot, mind, but the man was trying to cut back and she respected that.

“Still. Marrow _does_ have a point,” said Vine, who had either efficiently put away his pheasant or had most of it stolen by Elm.

“Mmm.” Harriet sat forward, and if Clover had been ‘joking’ only once his pointed suggestion was summarily rejected, she made even less effort to pretend this was anything but a challenge. “He’s right, you know. We could offer you a lot of business.”

The handful of regulars in the bar went very still and suddenly gained intense interest in the contents of their empty glasses. With the exception, of course, of Qrow, who openly smirked.

Marrow, being apparently the only one of the group in possession of the good sense the gods gave lemmings, gave a nervous laugh. “Hey, uh,” he said. “That’s... not what I meant—”

Robyn snapped a hand up, and he cut himself off so fast he nearly choked. After a long, silent staring match, she finally broke into a mild, pleasant smile that even Harriet Bree looked a little wary of.

“Well.” She gave a cheerful, flourishing bow. “Now that you suggest it. For you? Four hundred lien for the week. And I’ll graciously stable your horses for _free.”_

“Generous,” observed Qrow.

“Shut _up,_ Qrow.”

“All right.” Clover put his hands on the bar. Something inexplicable had shifted in his voice; Robyn recognized it, the same playtime-is-over note she’d used to jerk up more than enough rowdy patrons over the years. “Point taken, Robyn. Four hundred is highway robbery; but how about this. Three-fifty in order to help support a town under our protection, and we all agree to stop going for each other’s throats. Keep the peace.”

“Well,” Robyn replied in a perfectly even tone with no change of expression. “I wouldn’t know anything about highway robbery—”

“Of _course_ not,” muttered Marrow. Possibly she’d overestimated him.

“—but I do know it’ll take a lot more than that to buy _my_ courtesy.”

Qrow chuckled. Without looking over, she made a very rude gesture in his direction. In her peripheral vision, he cheerfully returned it.

“But fine. I won’t object to taking your money.” Reluctant or not, for now she would accept the truce. Two hundred extra lien between the five of them was two hundred extra lien. She ducked under the bar, fiddling open the combination lock to her key safe, and slapped two of them down on the counter. “You can take the bunkrooms at the end. Three racks per room, split up however you like. Breakfast starts at five, supper starts at half past six; it’s shepherd’s pie tonight. You’re lucky; finest mutton five hundred miles in any direction. Smoke if you like but bring a lit cigar anywhere near my stables and it’s a thousand lien charge on the spot.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Marrow had visibly straightened as she started rattling off rules, like a good little soldier. Clover’d probably recruited this one from Army reserves, and Robyn tried not to let her estimation of the kid tank too sharply at that realization. At least he’d brought the manners with him.

Harriet was staring at Clover, practically sparking with irritation.

“You _can’t_ be serious.” She let her open hand fall in Robyn’s general direction but did not actually condescend to address her directly. “Are we just—this is blatant price-gauging, you shouldn’t be encouraging her! How much is it really worth making friends with some half-bit saloon in the _middle_ of _nowhere—”_

“Five hundred,” Robyn told her. “And I’m charging you for feed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Initially inspired by [this](https://mylordshesacactus.tumblr.com/post/611716280417959936/0909079090-springthyme-and-fair-game-wild-west) wild west concept art. This is still set in a loosely Remnant-esque world; Dust is still a thing, this is a vaguely historicalish setting where the characters don't have activated Aura or Semblances for trope purposes so that won't play a role, and prices are historically accurate to the mid-1800s but translated into lien. You get the idea. Consider this to be the equivalent of an _in-universe_ Wild West AU.
> 
> God willing this will NOT morph into a massive 50k epic against my will; my current plan is for this to be mostly "episodic," a series of connected vignettes more than a traditional longform fic.
> 
> I say, already pulling out my clown shoes.


	2. Let's You And Me Have A Nice Quiet Talk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brief content warning--this is a Wild West AU in cattle country. There are pretty frank discussions of the realities of raising animals for meat. If that distresses you, this is your warning.

“Robyn!”

“Mrs. Partington.” Robyn smiled, pulling up Paige’s usual before immediately filling a lemonade glass for the young woman at her table. “How are the kids?”

“Better,” Paige sighed, relief like a soft summer rain in her voice. “Much better. Richie’s fever broke late last night. When I left them with their father he and little Johnny were finally sleeping naturally again. Robyn, if you hadn’t—”

“Hey.” Robyn shot her a firm look. “None of that. Dr. Polendina’s right here, you know.”

Pietro chuckled. He’d already waved off Paige’s attempt to buy him a drink, though Robyn suspected he wasn’t cruel enough to refuse to let the poor woman pay for the lemonade his daughter had gasped with delight over the moment Robyn set it down for her. “Oh, no. Mrs. Partington’s thanked me quite enough, Robyn. Do you know, she’s setting a hen for us! I did try to tell her that was too much. Wouldn’t hear it.”

Penny brightened even more at the reminder. “Oh! Yes! I have always wanted to keep chickens of our own. I am very much looking forward to it! I have several names prepared.”

Paige and Robyn winced in unison, but Pietro just looked affectionately amused.

“We’ll never be able to eat them,” he confessed in a stage whisper to Robyn. “But that’s all right, really. We’ve always done quite well bartering for that kind of thing—and truth be told, I’d rather take what folks can spare than come after their money.”

“You’ll never be rich, Doctor,” Robyn observed. “But you’re too good to be wasted like that anyway.”

A solemn look in his eyes behind the ever-present cheer and twinkle, Pietro made a gesture that would have been tipping his hat if he wasn’t too much of a classical gentleman to wear one inside. Robyn inclined her head, just slightly.

“You three sit tight,” she told the little group. “I’ll get you something to eat as soon as I can.”

“Take your time,” said Pietro with easy comfort. “We’re not going anywhere!”

Robyn waved to them—Paige Partington, weak and pale with relief, one son with a broken leg that had nearly killed him before anyone was able to get Pietro out to them, the other so sick with worry he’d stopped eating and nearly followed; Pietro holding her hand, slowly guiding her back up to normal after the days of hell her family had endured; Penny, her father’s wide-brimmed hat far too big for her, lighting up the room tenfold just by being there—and ducked back behind the bar. 

She half-glanced down as she passed the end, didn’t register anything significant about the array of cards Mantle’s schoolmaster had laid out in front of him, continued past—then did a double-take and backed up several steps.

“Shut up,” muttered Qrow.

_“Again?”_

Qrow Branwen buried his face in his hands. “I need a drink.”

“You need a lot more than that,” said Robyn, incredulous. “But I have to say, you’ve got some skill. It’s not easy for a man to lose at Solitaire three times in a row.”

“Bad luck,” he griped. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, “The kid?”

“Stable,” Robyn told him, reaching out to squeeze his shoulder softly. “Pietro thinks there’s every reason he should make a full recovery. It’s not impossible the leg will even be able to bear weight again someday, but even if he always limps, he’ll be alive.”

Qrow rubbed his face and took a long, shuddering breath.

“Good,” he said finally. “Good.”

After a long pause, fingers visibly shaking, he gathered up his Solitaire array, made a halfhearted attempt to mix the cards up, and began to deal himself a new one. Robyn, physically unable to stand it anymore, sighed and snatched the deck from his hands.

“Hey!”

She silenced him with a pointed look, shuffled the deck properly, cut it in half, and offered him both stacks. His eyes narrowed, but he finally relented and tapped the one on the left. Robyn placed it in front of him with an exasperated sigh and turned over the top card in her own deck.

“Really?” said Qrow, voice flat. “This is what we’re doing? I’m not a _kid—”_

“I can make it 52 Pick-Up,” Robyn informed him. He obediently turned over a card.

His eight beat Robyn’s three. He looked simultaneously pleased as he added them both to the bottom of his deck, and disgusted with himself for appreciating the ‘win’. Smirking in a manner that absolutely earned the middle finger he threw at her, Robyn flipped another card and got back to work.

She was _emphatically_ looking forward to autumn when fresh meat would be more accessible. There was only so much salt pork and smoked beef sausage you could expect a population to survive on, honestly; and while the fucking Apricot might not have her common sense, the hard truth was that hunting an area to feed your family and hunting an area consistently to feed a mid-sized mining town were different propositions. You had to let the population recover, so even antelope and hare weren’t always reliable additions to the menu.

Poor May, only three days ago, had been forced to recommend that Robyn stretch out the lean season by intentionally serving stew. Normally they only did that on nights when Robyn felt particularly annoying and May hadn’t been paying close enough attention to stop her.

Still; there were far worse fallbacks than honest, reliable eggs and bacon. And May really was performing some kind of honest to gods witchcraft with her ability to make the same basic sausage and ground beef taste different from day to day. They might not be able to keep up with the richer spices and French styles at the Apricot, but they made do well enough.

She set down a platter at the end of the bar in order to flip over another card. Qrow’s matched; Robyn grinned, added two more face-down cards, then turned over another.

 _“Ha,”_ she said when he failed to produce anything that would beat her queen. She picked up the Polendinas’ dinner and let a cursing Qrow fold her cards into her deck. “Your move.”

She didn’t make much conversation; it was a slow night, and Robyn wasn’t immune to the general sense of tiredness. She exchanged a few more friendly words with Penny, and returned to the bar to find Qrow finally cooperating with the game of War. She turned over a card to match the one waiting for her and instigated another friendly skirmish before adding sixteen cards to her deck.

“Qrow,” she said finally. “If you hadn’t said anything—”

“Shoulda said something sooner,” he muttered.

Robyn sighed. The Partington kids had missed three days of school before Qrow mentioned it at the bar; she’d had Joanna ride over the next morning on a bad feeling. By the time Joanna’s little mustang cross skidded to a halt outside Pietro’s door, streaming with sweat and wild-eyed from leeching his rider’s fear, Richie Partington was on death’s door. With his father off in the mines and his mother unable to leave his side, and little Johnny barely old enough to go to school with his brother...Paige had managed to put the poor donkey that the kid had fallen with out of its misery, but they just hadn’t been able to send anyone into town for help.

Robyn put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed.

“Don’t kick yourself for not panicking,” she ordered. “You said something when it started to look serious, and he’s going to make it thanks to you. Seven beats four, by the way.”

“Convenient how the dealer’s winning,” Qrow griped as Robyn took her cards and turned over a six of spades.

She smirked. “No idea what you’re implying there, Branwen, because I know you’re not insulting my honor.” She glanced up as the doors opened, then looked back at him. “Because if you were, I’d have to do something like—Fiona!”

Qrow chuckled as Robyn’s head snapped around, a wide smile already spreading over her face. Fiona grinned from across the room, ears pricking forward in a warm smile as her dog shook himself off from the dust and fading evening heat, and Robyn ran a reflexive hand through her hair.

“Right,” Qrow drawled. “You go deal with that.” 

Robyn ignored him as he turned over an eight of diamonds and added both cards to his own pile. Fiona slipped onto a bar stool and accepted the hand Robyn offered her, gripping it tightly.

“I didn’t expect you in again so soon!” Robyn exclaimed. “It can’t be slaughter season yet.”

This was the wrong country for wool sheep; it was hotter than hell, water you could afford to muddy up with dirt and soap for shearing season was at a premium, and the kind of sheep that could survive didn’t have fine enough wool to recoup the investment compared to mutton. Especially when your flock size was limited; Fiona wasn’t exactly a rancher baron.

Fiona mimed swatting at her. “You’ll be the first to know,” she promised. “You always are. No, I had to check in with the post office. I have a signed and confirmed offer from a butcher in Atlas in the bank now. Two hundred fifty lien per healthy lamb, up to a total of a hundred and twenty. Not less than sixty.”

One of the newcomers—a man Robyn didn’t know, who’d taken a room for two weeks while travelling to parts that were his own business—looked up in some kind of surprise or irritation. He caught Robyn noticing, held up his hands to indicate he wasn’t looking for trouble and went back to his sausage. Robyn made a note, but left it for now. This was cattle country; a sheep farmer was an oddity, that was all.

And if he was thinking something about a sheep faunus raising mutton, well, he'd keep his mouth shut about it under her roof. It wouldn't be anything Fiona hadn't heard before, anyway.

“Nice!” commented Qrow, turning over a card from his own deck and then, having apparently given up on her, playing for Robyn as well. She won the hand.

Buoyed by Fiona’s relief, Robyn smiled and poured her a generous double shot.

“On the house,” she said before Fiona could reach for her belt. “We’re celebrating.”

Fiona arched an eyebrow, eyes sparkling. “How does May feel about that?”

Robyn leaned in conspiratorially. “If I mysteriously disappear, I’ve been murdered by my bookkeeper.”

“Who you hired,” Fiona pointed out over the rim of her glass. “For a reason.”

“This is why May likes you,” Robyn acknowledged. Fiona laughed quietly, toasted her, and finished her drink. 

“So,” she said. “I’ll be driving ninety of the spring lambs out to the railroad junction at the end of the month. That leaves you with not quite twenty total.”

Robyn frowned. “Fiona,” she said. “I can’t offer you two-fifty for them, you should bring them all—”

“Don’t bother,” advised Qrow. Robyn forestalled Fiona’s agreement with two fingers, got up, flipped a card off the top of her deck to shut him up, and returned.

“As I was saying.”

“He’s right,” said Fiona, as if there had never been an interruption. “Don’t even start. I’ll make up some of the loss with what’s left from shearing; it’s bad, these are hair sheep, but people still spin it if they need material badly enough. After everything you’ve done for me over the years—” 

“You don’t owe me,” Robyn protested.

“—the least I can do is pay it forward.” Fiona grabbed Robyn’s hands again. “Stop arguing and take the lambs. You’re not the only one who’s allowed to take less than she could demand because it’s the right thing to do, okay? We help each other.”

Robyn set her jaw; Fiona sighed at the nearly imperceptible shift of expression. “I am _not_ ripping you off like that. If you can make seventy-five extra lien per head in Atlas, that’s where you sell.”

Fiona crossed her arms. “A hundred and seventy-five lien each. Take the lambs or I’m selling them to the Apricot.”

Outside the doors in the dying evening light, a tonally appropriate tumbleweed meandered down the road.

“That was below the belt,” Robyn finally said. “Fine. You win. And thank you. But I’m only taking fifteen, sell the rest.”

“Fine.” Fiona looked up through pale eyelashes and smiled. “And...thank you.”

Robyn returned the soft smile; then, after a long moment, she shook herself. “Get you anything?”

Fiona hesitated, then reluctantly shook her head. “No,” she said, voice filled with regret. “No, we should be getting home. Right, Forrest?”

Her herding dog, a big brown-and-white beast she liked to joke was half collie and half Ursa, looked up and wagged enthusiastically. As always, Robyn felt a twist of anxiety at the thought of Fiona out there on an isolated homestead with nothing but a donkey, a sheepdog, and a hunting rifle for protection. And as always, she forced it down. Fiona was a grown woman, and she knew what she was doing.

Besides. If Robyn was being fair, Fiona also had both her primary breeding ram, whom she spoke of in glowingly affectionate terms as being a delightfully stupid but reliably brave, gentle animal; and her backup breeding ram, whom she spoke of in glowingly affectionate terms as being direct kin to seven types of Grimm and half-brother of the Devil himself. 

Combined, they could generally handle themselves. Still—Robyn worried. 

“Good luck next month,” she told Fiona. “And congratulations on not needing to buy extra forage until next summer!”

Fiona laughed. “You have no idea. Take care, Robyn.”

“I’ll be fine,” Robyn tossed back. “You stay safe out there.”

Only mostly mocking, Fiona gave her hat a jaunty tweak. “Yes ma’am, _Miss Hill.”_

Before Robyn could recover from her indignation, Fiona was gone. Robyn’s gaze slid to Joanna as the few regulars in the saloon shared friendly laughter at her expense; Joanna nodded and, quiet and casual, smooth as silk, maneuvered herself to the side of the young man who’d reacted so strangely earlier and placed a hand on his shoulder. 

Within moments, without any of Robyn’s people so much as noticing anything might be out of the ordinary, the man had been steered firmly into a stool in front of her.

Robyn poured him a slow, deliberate glass of bourbon and placed it with a very final clink on the bar.

“Evening, friend.”

The man’s jaw worked.

“Ma’am,” he said. His tone was not _friendly,_ but it passed muster.

Robyn’s voice was quiet, pitched just below the point of easy eavesdropping but not so low as to attract attention by being secretive.

“We’ve got nothing against honest ranch hands in these parts,” she told him, calm and even. “We’re all just trying to make a living. It’s good manners to accept a drink when someone buys you one, by the way.”

As slow and deliberate as Robyn herself, the young man raised his glass to her and tossed it back.

“I just asked Joanna here to bring you over for a talk so you know you’ve got no enemies in this town,” she continued. “And to reassure you that I _know_ honorable cattlemen know better than to hassle a young woman alone, sheep farmer or no. She’s got eighty ewes and a pair of rams on a hundred and sixty acres of fenced homestead, Johnny. Rangeland’s public, but she hasn’t touched it anyway.”

The man worked his jaw for a minute.

“I wouldn’t’ve touched her if she had,” he retorted. “And before you get anything in a twist, we’re not bringing the herds anywhere near here this year, so it doesn’t matter how much I fucking hate sheep. Won’t affect us.” He at least had the grace to belatedly make a face at how the sheep comment could be interpreted. "Don't much like faunus either, but I didn't mean it that way."

Robyn smiled. “I know. You just looked like you were about done with your meal. Figured you might be going for an evening smoke, and people here are protective of each other. A cowhand, an outsider, gets up to leave right when Fiona does? Folks might have assumed some things about you that aren’t true."

He glared at her. “Kind of you. And my name’s not Johnny.”

“Mmm. You should probably stay in tonight, Johnny. Otherwise someone might jump to conclusions."

His lip twisted; but he got up without a word and stalked upstairs to the rack room. Robyn and Joanna exchanged another long look; but there was almost no chance the man would be stupid enough to try anything anymore.

There was a pause.

 _“Fuck!”_ said Qrow, who had just lost against himself at War.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a non-zero chance I accidentally wrote another chapter in a day OOPS
> 
> Also, to the best of my knowledge, all of the prices in this fic should be historically accurate or, at the very least, historically viable; the price of sheep in the 1870s could be anywhere between 75 cents per head to four and a half dollars each, so if we assume an area where mutton is hard to get and account for lambs for slaughter being worth quite a bit less than breeding stock, Fiona should be getting a fair price for her animals.


	3. My Horse Could Beat Up Your Horse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Given both the source material and the nature of a Wild West AU I didn't think it merited an archive warning exactly; but given The General State Of The Real World, it would be grossly irresponsible not to send up a flag here for genre-typical violence by law enforcement--as should be obvious, this is not a "heroic sheriff" kind of Western.

Olive Tarandus was starting to get seriously worried.

It was payday; _everyone_ knew the bank stagecoach had come through in the middle of the night. Travel between Atlas and Mantle, especially with large sums of cash, was dangerous and thus rare. If you wanted the benefit of making it hard to set up an ambush, you had to deal with the tradeoff of never knowing whether your actual money would come through in one, two, or three months. Sometimes cash shipments came twice in three weeks; once when Olive was little it had been six months between deliveries.

Everyone worked mostly on credit out here; and even the SDC-controlled general store understood that. You kept your pay-stub receipts and kept careful track of what you were owed for your work in the Dust mines, and the store sent records of your debt to the bank, and once that debt and the interest was subtracted, what was left was put in your account.

Non-SDC businesses didn’t have that kind of direct clout. Any debts you might have with them they’d collect on themselves; Olive’s dad owed two hundred lien to Miss Thyme for a lamb he’d purchased from her last summer so that they could have a proper dinner for the Equinox, even though Olive’s mother worried they couldn’t afford it. 

The point was, the arrival of actual _money_ in Mantle was always something of a miniature festival atmosphere crossed with overwhelming anxiety. There was always the chance you’d done the math wrong, or a bonus you were owed hadn’t come through yet…

She didn’t understand what had gone wrong.

Her father hadn’t been able to come himself, which wasn’t unusual; so Olive had come instead. The bank knew her, this was normal.

And then the new guy, the young sheriff on the big white horse, had shown up out of nowhere trailing four deputies who looked like they meant business. She’d assumed it was just because they would have provided security for the stagecoach, but nothing he was saying made any sense...

“...suggest you all go home.”

“What are you _talking_ about?” Olive called. “We aren’t doing anything—”

“No one’s saying you are,” Sheriff Ebi cut in smoothly. “This is a new policy we’re implementing across several townships in the area. There’s been an increase in Grimm attacks in mining towns as well as on the range; large public gatherings, especially ones that involve money changing hands, need to be avoided for the foreseeable future.”

“Hey.” Mr. Branwen, who’d been giving Olive extra lessons in algebra, didn’t sound happy. “Listen, buddy, get lost. We’ve had plenty of Grimm attacks. We’ve never had one over _payday.”_

“I know,” Ebi said, easy and soothing, nearly lounging on his big sleepy horse; but the mounted lawmen behind him were a lot less relaxed. The big one had a shotgun, all of them had conspicuous lassos ready on their saddles, and Ebi himself—Olive had noticed the gleaming stockwhip, even if he thought no one had. “But there’s a first time for everything. Now I’m saying this once more. Whichever three of you were here first can stay. The rest need to find somewhere else to be. _Now.”_

For a moment it looked like maybe a few of them were about to break off; Olive hesitated herself. She wasn’t looking for trouble, this was just meant to be a visit to the bank, but—none of this made sense, and she didn’t want to draw attention to herself right now either. 

No one _else_ was leaving; a few of them wavered but then seemed to decide, and collectively the crowd—now tense and angry where before they’d been joking around, if a little stressed—seemed to decide to ignore him.

Ebi sighed.

“Harriet,” he said, gestured around the side of the crowd, and put a hand on his whip.

Olive’s shoulders hunched tight enough to bump her antlers as a silent buzz of tension drew the crowd closer together. She had no idea what was about to happen before new hoofbeats sounded from behind the sheriff.

“Clover,” Miss Hill greeted him casually. “What seems to be the problem?”

* * *

Joanna reined her gelding to a deceptively casual halt a good twenty feet back from Clover’s party. He was a little thing, which tended to surprise people given...well, Joanna. But they didn’t need a foxhunter out here; Spark was equal parts quarter-horse savviness and mustang fire with the common sense from both, and built strong and lean. 

He wouldn’t carry double for long, not when both his riders were tall and somewhat more than waifish; but he didn’t need to. All else aside, Robyn had no intention of holding any kind of negotiation while clinging to her bouncer like a starfish.

Joanna slipped her foot from the stirrup, letting Robyn swing herself down over Spark's big sorrel rump. She ran an idle hand over his shoulder in thanks as she approached the assembled lawmen.

Clover looked resigned as he half-turned his white stallion to acknowledge her.

“Robyn.” His tone was not encouraging. “This doesn’t concern you. I’d advise you to turn around and go back.” 

Robyn ignored him. “Really?” she asked, keeping her voice light as she moved deliberately slowly toward the horses. “I was just doing my usual chores when I heard some kind of commotion. Seems to me like that should _concern me._ Did something happen?”

She could see the irritated calculation in Clover’s eyes; by dismounting she’d made it so that he would look bad—stiff, disrespectful, unnecessarily aggressive—if he continued refusing to mirror that decision in order to talk as equals. 

And if he was foolish enough to insist on breaking this up by force, he was going to start with her—a woman on foot, alone among five horsemen, who’d approached in good faith.

Harriet Bree was, unfortunately, intelligent enough to be quick on the uptake.

 _“That’s_ close enough.” She didn’t nudge her big leggy thoroughbred forward so much as slightly loosen her iron hold on his curb; the stallion surged forward and danced sideways when he hit the end of the slack she’d given him, cutting across Robyn’s path and blocking her off from Clover. “He _said_ go back.”

The stallion snorted in rage at having his momentum checked; oiled hooves flashed in the sunlight as he nearly reared, and only Harriet backing him off and then letting him fall forward again convinced him to stand. Behind Robyn, May gave an almost identical snort of derision.

Robyn didn’t disagree. Bree’s mount was fast, certainly; he had the awkward, inelegant lines of an Eastern track racer, a rich dark bay built for speed over form—or any other function. And the fiery, unstable temperament to match, that of a champion racehorse with a string of owners who cared about nothing but that he was faster than any other horse he met, and had given no care to him otherwise. That Harriet Bree could handle him at all was a testament to her iron control; but not a kind of control that was healthy. For either of them. Not that Atlas cared.

“Clover,” Robyn tried again.

 _“Enough,_ Robyn.” She didn’t like the set of his jaw, or the too-understanding voice that no longer quite managed to hide the hard warning underneath it. “If you want to help these people, I’d _suggest_ encouraging them to disperse for a while. You have a perfectly good saloon to host them in.”

“They’re welcome,” she said, conceding ground in the hope of calming the situation and hating every moment. “But frankly, I like my patrons to have money. Clover, what are you doing. There’s no _need_ for any of this.”

“Public gatherings bring the Grimm.” Gods, his voice was so quiet and earnest; Robyn hadn’t known she could feel this level of impotent hatred before, so that was a fascinating discovery. “This is for the best.”

Forcing down the burning need to lay out exactly what brand of fucking idiot this shiny-booted outsider was, Robyn closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. Deep breath. Hold it. Let it out slowly. There. Better.

“Anger and fear bring the Grimm, Clover,” she told him softly, not opening her eyes. _“Desperation_ brings the Grimm.”

But it was too little too late; he’d committed, and she’d lost him.

“I know how you feel about Atlas, and this isn't the time. If you want to discuss the new regulations,” Clover told her firmly, “There are _appropriate_ ways to do so. People calling you the mayor as a _joke_ doesn’t give you the right to interfere with me doing my job.”

“Your job is to protect people, not terrorize them in the streets—”

“My job is to ensure stability in an incredibly vulnerable town, and you’re consistently doing your best to undermine that.” He sighed and shook his head, and Robyn tensed as a gleaming stockwhip, silver clovers and the encircled staff of Atlas inlaid on the handle, uncoiled with practiced ease at his side. “Robyn, _stand down_.”

There was a long, tense pause. Elm’s grip shifted slightly on her shotgun. Robyn did not miss it. Neither, in her peripheral vision, did Joanna.

Finally, Robyn sighed. _If that’s how it has to be._

“Fine.” She glanced over her shoulder and waved a hand. Joanna sighed and reluctantly shifted into a more relaxed seat, backing Spark up and turning away. May, fixing Clover with a glare that could have blistered paint, made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat but obediently pulled her slim little Arabian off as well.

Robyn took another step forward, hoping to keep attention for just a few more minutes.

“Clover.” She held her hands out, open and unthreatening, and stepped forward again. A slight breeze ruffled her hair. The big bay thoroughbred pinned his ears and threw his head back, fighting for a half-rear as his nostrils flared; Robyn pointedly didn’t look at him. “I’m not challenging you, I’m only trying to—”

_There._

If she hadn’t been watching for it she would have been as unprepared as Harriet. The big thoroughbred squealed in rage, ripped through his rider’s hold, and bit deep into the shoulder of Clover’s horse. Blood sprayed across pristine white.

Clover barked, _“Easy, Kingfisher!”_ to absolutely no avail. Kingfisher was a well-trained, even-tempered animal; but the most bombproof schooling pony in the world would bugle if you tore a chunk out of his neck. He struck back to kill, not maim, white lips pulled back over yellow teeth. The thoroughbred whiplashed aside and _kicked,_ nearly throwing his rider; that Harriet Bree managed to keep her seat was a testament to her skill and her stupidity, because what she _should_ have been doing was bailing at top speed.

Kingfisher whirled away from the deadly kick toward his head; while Bree fought her enraged racehorse and lost, the white charger blundered into Elm’s draft horse. To his credit the chestnut didn’t immediately try to commit a murder—but Kingfisher, hurt and furious, didn’t care. There was another, larger stallion in his personal space.

He struck, snakelike, hatred in his eyes. Elm's Timber shrieked in rage, reared, and dove down to seize Kingfisher’s neck from above. He shook his stablemate like a dog with a bone; Elm managed to wrench him off by sheer force, but by then Harriet’s thoroughbred had lathered himself into a killing rage that knew no redirecting. He charged again at Kingfisher, blew past under his own uncontrolled momentum, crashed into Vine Zeki’s little champagne-colored Thorn, and decided one enemy stallion was as good as any other. 

Thorn screamed and thrashed, managing to kick Timber in the face as he reared and struck out at his attacker—

“Whoa!” Poor Marrow Amin, the only one of Clover’s people with the sense to ride a gelding instead of an intact stallion, backed his little bay frantically down the street as it tossed its head, panicked by the sudden violence. “What the _hell—”_

Robyn wasted no more time. Leaping onto the nearest fence post, she gripped a nearby drainpipe and gave a sharp whistle.

“Anyone not on a horse, get back!” she called. The order was not necessary; no one in Mantle was stupid enough to stay anywhere near fighting stallions. “Bree, I _told_ you to _geld_ that monster—you know what, forget it. Get him out of here!”

 _“Oh, is that all?!”_ Harriet shot back. That she was able to form words at all while clinging to her bucking horse made her, Robyn freely admitted, ten times the horsewoman she herself would ever be.

 _“You’re not helping, Robyn!”_ agreed Clover, whose horse was currently half on top of Timber and trying to rip the poor thing’s ears off. Somehow, he got a hand free to toss her his excessively decorated stockwhip. “Get these people clear, we— _Kingfisher!”_

Robyn nodded once, serious, and gave another sharp whistle. The whiplash snapped like a thundercrack over the heads of the gathered crowd, well clear of any chance of hurting anyone—but startling even Harriet’s squirming demon into shying away from the bystanders. The moment Spark was maneuvered close enough, Robyn handed off the whip; Joanna was better with them.

As it turned out, further intervention wasn’t necessary. Whatever fit of madness had overtaken the horses seemed to have passed; shaken and concerned, Clover and his people were already starting to get their horses under control. Or, in Harriet’s case, as controlled as he ever was. It would take some time yet before they were stable, though, and Clover had the sense to put Kingfisher in a fast trot directly away from the thoroughbred, burning off some of his frantic energy. They wouldn’t be converging again for at least the next several hours.

May had conveniently vanished.

“Is everyone all right?” Robyn called to the gathered crowd. She got a scattered chorus of affirmatives, and sighed with relief as she dropped back to the ground.

Behind her, a young bank teller peeked around the door.

“Ah...” he said, glancing between the crowd and the place where Clover and his gang had vanished. “I can take whoever’s next?”

* * *

Marrow groaned and rubbed his face.

It had been an awful morning, and it was just barely noon, which meant there was plenty of time for things to get worse.

He patted Kingfisher on the good shoulder and made an I’m-watching-you gesture at Lightning Storm where he was grumpily eating hay, cross-tied on the far side of the water trough.

Timber and Thorn had some bruises, but they’d be fine; Vine had gotten knocked around a bit when Storm tried to climb on top of him, but miraculously, he also didn’t have anything but really deep bruises. With the exception of Kingfisher’s nasty shoulder bite, Storm had honestly done more damage to _himself_ than anyone else.

Having seen to the others, Marrow gave a sigh of relief and pressed his forehead against Ace’s neck. He loved Ace. Ace was a good, good horse who’d _never_ lost his mind out of nowhere and started a brawl in the street.

“If I ever stop appreciating you,” he said seriously, “You have my permission to kick me in the head.”

Ace lipped affectionately at his hair.

“That’s a beautiful horse you’ve got there.”

Marrow looked up and tried to keep his tail from showing his irritation. Robyn Hill was leaning against the hitching rail, one foot resting casually on the fence post, not a hair out of place, smiling. He glared at her. “Yeah, yeah. Funny.”

He _liked_ Ace. He didn’t appreciate his horse being made fun of, and “beautiful” could only be mocking in this case. Ace was a standard bay with three white socks and a blaze; or, to put it more bluntly, he was brown. Brown with a delicate undertone of more brown, and slapdash lopsided markings. He was sick to death of hearing the constant “farm horse” comments from the other deputies.

But Robyn actually looked surprised at his defensiveness. She shifted forward slightly, frowning.

“I mean it,” she said. “I like a good Morgan. Solid ankles, good legs, good hooves, and he’s put together just about perfectly. Grounded, but light on his feet. Dependable enough to survive on the range, strong enough for a workhorse, pretty enough to pull a carriage if you’re only a _little_ bit of a snob.” She crossed her arms in a loose, friendly manner, casting an appreciative eye over Ace’s topline. “I’d take him over any of the others.”

Marrow hesitated. Treacherously, his tail gave a tentative wag. “Really? I mean, other than Storm, obviously.”

Robyn laughed so explosively at that comment that she immediately clapped a hand over her mouth, lavender eyes wide and twinkling. After a moment, she lowered her hand with a bright grin.

“He’s gorgeous and all,” she explained, nodding toward Kingfisher. “But he’s too heavy and frankly he’s too big. That’s a lot of muscle to feed that there's no use for, and you sacrifice quickness and endurance to get it. Besides, he's so steady he might as well be asleep. I like a horse that thinks back at me. Same with the damn Haflinger.” She waved a hand in vague disgust. “They’re both high-bred to hell and back. You could get a _string_ of good quarter horse studs for half what it costs to get that import and the pedigree it came with.”

Marrow blinked. “What, Timber?” He’d always assumed Timber was just as much of a farm horse as Ace, if not more so; he was a draft horse, for pity’s sake. Too big and heavy to be worth anything to a range rider, sure, but... “And you’re one to talk about imported pedigrees, doesn’t Marigold ride an _Arabian?”_

Robyn looked amused. “Noticed that, did you?”

He had. It was hard not to; May Marigold’s imported blue-roan Arab was easily the most beautiful animal south of Atlas, even including Kingfisher. He was pretty sure the only reason someone hadn’t stolen it was that May was a little bit terrifying.

Robyn conceded, “We give her shit for that too, but it was her family’s money. And at least it wasn’t wasted. That’s a _real_ desert horse and it shows; she’s light, smart...endurance for days. She’ll still be holding a trot after half the horses on the planet keel over at a walk.”

“You know,” Marrow added. “Like a _mustang.”_

“Which are free!” agreed Robyn. He grinned, and she tipped him a wink. “I _said_ we give her shit for it. Anyway, even Huntress is better than whatever _that_ is.” She pointed at Thorn, who was a perfectly ordinary saddlebred as far as Marrow could tell. “I’m about to start charging an extra lien to board that thing as a fee for making me look at it. What’s Zeki done to its _tail?”_

“That wasn’t actually him,” was all Marrow could say in defense of the ridiculous overswept tail.

“Mmm.” Robyn stood, brushing off her skirts. “Well, even if all that wasn’t true, at least _one_ lawman in this town has the brains to ride a nice, sensible gelding.”

Marrow suppressed another spike of defensiveness; there’d been plenty of jokes about _that_ too, from the others. What was he supposed to have done, passed up a good price on a solid, dependable horse because it was castrated?

“More of you should do that,” Robyn commented. “You never know when someone might ride by upwind on a mare in heat.”

“Thank you!” Marrow ruffled Ace’s mane. “But honestly, the odds of that causing a real problem—”

He stopped.

 _Even_ Huntress _is better than—_ the Arabian was a _mare—_

His jaw tensed.

"I'll admit," she said, voice light, examining her nails. "Of all the men to be immune to May's feminine wiles, _you're_ not the one I would have guessed."

“You’re full of shit, Hill,” he told her, crossing his arms. He’d let her draw him into a false sense of camaraderie, chatting about horses, complimenting his mount, teasing him about—that last thing didn't matter. But she’d confessed to causing the morning's bloodbath with a slight smirk and a sparkle in her eye like they were sharing a private joke. “Someone could have gotten _hurt_ today!”

At least the shit-eating grin had dropped.

“Yeah,” she said, serious, voice low. “Someone really could have.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may have sliiiightly fudged the timeline on Haflingers in order to make a point. In the 1870s they were JUST starting to be established as a formal breed in Austria--the foundation stud would still be a colt, in all likelihood. However, if you want to appreciate just how RIDICULOUS the Haflinger studbook is, and thus why I needed to use it as an example of "even the AceOps who seem more down-to-earth are still up to their ears in rich-people Atlas nonsense", pull up the Wikipedia page on Haflinger horses and just LOOK at what it takes to register one as a purebred.
> 
> For Elm to have a pedigreed Haflinger, especially an imported Austrian Haflinger in the slightly-fudged 1800s, would be a ludicrous expense just to have The Perfect Horse For Her. Kind of like how Atlas pairs its Huntsman teams; a lot of trouble to get the "ideal match" instead of just letting two people learn how to work with each other. There is literally no reason Elm couldn't just get a big well-built quarter horse and do just as well.
> 
> Also, fun fact! There's no true "roan" gene in the Arabian line, but there is a rabicano gene that creates a similar pattern to roaning, and rabicano Arabians are generally registered as "roan" for simplicity's sake.


	4. A Troubled Loner With A Mysterious Past

May Marigold’s arrangement with Robyn was...simple.

It was simple, and it wasn’t.

Straightforward enough on paper, she supposed, letting herself down into the cellar and brushing a friendly spider off her shoulder. Robyn was—

Robyn was indescribable.

Robyn was a woman in ten million; sharper than a surgeon’s knife, the steadiest marksman a thousand miles in any direction _at least,_ reflexes like a whiplash but overflowing with the kind of compassion that was supposed to dry up this far out into the wasteland. She hadn’t _tried_ to build a following in this town; she listened, and heard, and always showed up when you were at your most desperate—if not with what you were looking for, then with what you needed.

She’d done it for May, after all.

Robyn Hill spoke—and rarely even needed to raise her voice to do it—and the desert paused to listen.

But she couldn’t do math worth a god damn.

So on paper things were straightforward, with them. Robyn ran her place as she saw fit, May couldn’t change that and wouldn’t try if she could. But May kept her books, handled her expenses, managed her accounts, monitored her inventory, placed her orders six months ahead of when she’d start actually needing what was in them. She found places they could cut back on expenses, making room for the little bits of charity that were the only thing keeping Mantle alive.

Moved numbers around, which was all the woman who’d become May Marigold had ever been raised to be good at.

And in exchange Robyn gave her free room and board, and 40% of the purely hypothetical profits, and stabled her horse.

Off paper, it was...more complicated.

May sighed and lit a lamp, scaring off several more spiders.

No one ended up in Mantle by accident. But very few people exactly ended up in Mantle on _purpose,_ either.

Everyone was running. You had to be, in order to get this far away from anything. If there was one thing May had learned, riding west with no money, no plan, and no friends except a horse bred to run and never stop—that was it. Everyone was running. Some were running away from debt, or stagnation. Plenty were running from memories, from people they’d left behind. From people they used to be.

Often those last two were the same thing. 

Not that she’d know anything about that.

May cracked her neck, rolling her eyes at herself. This was what happened when she worked late, apparently. She got all melancholy and shit. She’d sworn when she came out here that she wouldn’t turn into yet another _troubled loner on a dark horse with a mysterious past._ She’d actually made Joanna promise to shoot her.

What she was _trying_ to do was take inventory before she hit the sack. Robyn could stay up all damn night if she wanted—and she probably would, because Fiona was finally back in town after three months—but May was a reasonable woman, and—

Well, May was a tired woman who wanted to sleep, she corrected herself. Let’s not get crazy here.

They were doing all right. Veal and lamb were of course not an option until autumn; and now that it was spring they had a moratorium on wild game. They had most of a brick of oolong tea remaining, thankfully; she was _not_ looking forward to finding room for more in the budget. Plenty of salt pork and, unfortunately, dried beef perfect for stew. On the bright side—they had a barrel of pickled mackerel and multiple racks of dried codfish Robyn hadn’t told anyone about and was keeping in her back pocket for when folks _really_ got sick of the usual. 

_Those_ were in nearly the same category as their last jar of pickles, and the industrial-sized can of sardines they were saving for a special occasion.

They could use more brown sugar, were running short on lamp oil, and were at serious risk of running out of potatoes before May could arrange for a few more bushels; but in the meantime there would always be rice and beans to fill the gap. Butter and cheese, as per usual, would come from Atlas with their usual alcohol order.

No surprises. May _might_ have committed some violence if there were surprises.

She glanced back at the cellar entrance. 

Hefting a sack of flour, she climbed just high enough to drop it unceremoniously at the top of the stairs and then retreated back into the cool underground space, casually swinging the door closed behind her.

Nearly silently, she slipped an open padlock through rungs that did not logically belong on the _inside_ of a cellar door.

There was probably no need. The saloon was nearly silent at this time of night and the odds of anyone wandering into the kitchen by accident even during peak hours were small. The only ones likely to interrupt her by accident were Robyn or Joanna, and there were no secrets between them.

Still; Robyn had never taken chances where Mantle’s future was involved, and May wasn’t about to either.

Everyone who ended up in Mantle was running from something. Robyn was the only one who seemed to genuinely believe Mantle was a place to run _to._ No one really seemed to know when she’d shown up; she’d been in this little patch of dust since she was at least a young teenager, she’d vanished for a while, and when she came back it was with just enough Atlesian gear to make it clear what she’d left behind.

Few people realized just _how_ high a commission she’d been offered. May had only seen the paperwork once, pinned by a Marshal’s badge—a flash of gold Robyn kept as a reminder. But it would have made Clover Ebi _blush._

Very carefully, May felt around under a rack of paper-wrapped bacon slabs until her fingers found a smooth slip of metal under what very much appeared to be a poorly-made wooden rack. Pulling a tiny silver key from around her neck—the only one of its kind, not even Robyn had a spare—she inserted it into the lock by touch.

The false bottom of the rack fell out, depositing the slim notebook in which May did the _real_ bookkeeping.

A few notes were all she had to do tonight. Once she’d finished what she’d come to do and secured her little black book—which was actually more of a dark maroon, that wasn’t the point—she shook yet another spider out of her hair and unlocked the cellar door.

“Robyn,” she called. Robyn, leaning against the bar with an expression on her face so tender that May somehow felt like she was intruding in the middle of a public saloon, glanced over. May glanced between her and her favorite shepherd, raised an eyebrow, and pointedly ignored Robyn’s warning glare. “I’m calling it a night.”

“I didn’t know you slept!” exclaimed Fiona, the angelic innocence of her tone ruined by her impish grin. May smirked; Fiona waved her fingers over the rim of a whiskey she hadn’t touched. It was almost like that wasn’t the thirst she’d stayed so late to quench, _or something._

“Nice to see you too, Fiona.” Not even May could feign a bad temper with Fiona Thyme. “Don’t stay away so long next time. Robyn was having kittens.”

“May,” said Robyn.

“I’m serious. I was _this_ close to shooting her to put her out of my misery—”

_“May…”_

“It’s almost like she _worries_ about you!” May informed Fiona, who was gamely trying to hide a smile in order to spare Robyn’s dignity. “Which can’t _possibly_ be true, since she denies it every time either of us asks.”

“Miss Marigold,” Robyn mused to the ceiling. “Do you remember when we met. Do you _happen_ to remember when I _very generously_ took a lone stranger with an unknown past into my household, putting utter faith in her undying loyalty?” 

“And I know she’d never _lie_ to us,” continued May, whose undying loyalty only extended so far.

Fiona’s lips twitched. _“Goodnight,_ May.”

May knew a dismissal when she heard one. She stepped forward and ruffled Fiona’s hair with unfeigned affection, and made herself scarce.

* * *

Fiona kept one ear cocked toward the upstairs balcony until she heard May’s door lock.

Robyn, a weary expression on her face, shook her head.

Under her breath, she muttered, “Woman’s a menace.”

Fiona nudged Robyn with her shoulder, smiling. “Stop it,” she chided. “You love her.”

“Well, don’t tell _her_ that. She’d be even more insufferable.”

Fiona gave her arm a playful shove, Robyn smiled soft and easy—and as always, something in Fiona’s chest tightened in time with her fluttering heart. 

As always, she _hated_ herself for it.

It was just—this was _Robyn._ It wasn’t just that she was the most beautiful woman on Remnant. She was...special. She had a _presence._ And Fiona was _not_ the only one who noticed. 

Most of the folks who’d tried courting her over the years were polite, at least; and when your aim was as good as Robyn’s you could usually deal with the ones that weren’t. There’d always been a rotating roster of admirers who maybe came in a little more often than they could afford and spent a little longer watching the bar with a faint smile than anyone else, and all of _them_ knew where the limits were. 

Robyn gave Fiona’s collar an idle tug to straighten it, and Fiona’s heart leaped into her throat again.

“It’s good to have you back,” Robyn murmured.

Fiona, ears folded with her own embarrassment, managed a half grin and kicked lightly at her shins. “So, you _worried_ about me?”

Get a _grip,_ Thyme.

Robyn had been a dear friend for years—very literally an oasis in the desert, in more ways than one. Her companionship and kindness was the most precious thing in Fiona’s world; and she would be doing Robyn a horrible disservice by reading further into those kindnesses than necessary. Robyn was _always_ generous. She helped _everyone_ when she could, when they needed it; it wasn’t as if Fiona was the only person in Mantle to whom Robyn Hill was the center of gravity for all of Remnant.

Robyn helped people and they paid it forward. The sheer presumption of even _wanting_ anything more was mortifying.

But Fiona was...for lack of a better phrase, only human.

It was late, and she was tired. Lambing season was over, finally; she’d left Forrest to guard the flock today because she physically couldn’t take the isolation any more. But the end of lambing season also meant the beginning of peak flash flood season, and the fact that there’d been a bad drought early this spring only made that danger worse. Thankfully most of her land was on high ground, but they still needed to move in order to find fresh grass, and inevitably that would mean passing through risky areas.

Fiona had been under a little bit of stress recently, was the point. She was _exhausted,_ she’d been carrying tension in every muscle for months…

And Robyn’s dusty, dark-panelled saloon, late enough that she’d closed the shutters and slipped the deadbolt on the big external door, the few lamps still lit burning low, shining off glass and polished brasswork...Fiona was stressed and exhausted but relaxing every minute, and she couldn’t find the energy to overthink the respite she’d needed so badly.

Robyn had come around the bar and was leaning casually on one elbow, smiling and tired herself, open, at ease. Somewhere in a dictionary under the entry _a sight for sore eyes,_ there was a picture that didn’t come anywhere close to this.

“I always worry about you,” Robyn murmured, and squeezed Fiona’s shoulder. It was likely intended as a friendly gesture; but she happened to put pressure directly on top of the worst of Fiona’s tense muscles, and the small pained noise clued her in. Her grip shifted slightly so that her thumb could press more firmly into the knot, and it hurt, but Fiona melted anyway.

“Right there,” she sighed, eyes drifting closed. _“Ow._ That’s perfect.”

Robyn gave a soft chuckle. “You poor thing. Don’t move.”

“Yes’m,” mumbled Fiona. 

It took the better part of ten minutes; but if Fiona was honest with herself, Robyn’s close, quiet attention would have been enough to work the last of those tension knots loose on its own.

“You’re an angel,” she sighed.

Robyn laughed quietly. The fingers on Fiona’s shoulder didn’t need to be there anymore; but she didn’t remove them. The touch wandered until her hand rested comfortably against the side of Fiona’s neck, and stayed there, warm and grounding.

“I nearly sent May out to check on you,” Robyn said, voice low. Her thumb rubbed reassuring circles on Fiona’s skin, impossible not to relax into. “And that was only because she wouldn’t let me go myself.”

“People need you here,” said Fiona.

“I know. But you’re people too. And I...” Robyn’s calloused thumb ran up against the sensitive skin just under Fiona’s jaw, and she couldn’t help but lean into the touch, just a little. It was—fine, this was _good,_ it was warm and comfortable, and she completely missed the rest of the sentence.

“You don’t need to worry about me,” Fiona managed after a pause. Her voice came out just a little too breathless, and she glanced away to hide her flush. “It’s just me, I’m not...really worth messing with, anyway.”

The hand left Fiona’s shoulder; before she had time to miss it, Robyn took her chin in a firm, gentle grip and lifted her gaze back up.

Fiona’s breath caught. If either of them had intended to say anything, they both seemed to have forgotten.

Robyn’s fingers were still cupping Fiona’s chin. She didn’t move her hand.

Her thumb stroked along the length of Fiona’s jaw. It was almost hesitant, except that Robyn never hesitated over anything...a slow, careful motion, hypnotic, drawing the air out of the room and making the lamplight brighter, somehow.

The pad of Robyn’s thumb traced just below Fiona’s lips.

It almost didn’t seem intentional; Robyn’s expression was nearly trancelike, eyes glazed as they followed the agonizingly slow movement. Reflexively, Fiona licked her lips, and something flickered like violet fire behind Robyn’s eyes.

Fiona’s nerveless fingers slipped off the bar. She was too far gone to notice or care that they bumped a bit of rough wood as they fell. Half in a daze, she let her lips part against Robyn’s thumb; the grip on her chin tightened nearly undetectably, a quick spasm, just once…

Fiona’s staff hit the ground like a gunshot.

She nearly leaped out of her skin. Robyn snapped her hand away like she’d been burned, halfway across the room before Fiona could even register that she’d moved.

“Fiona,” Robyn gasped.

“I.” Fiona swallowed, heart hammering in her chest. She hadn’t meant for that to happen, she hadn’t—intended to let that happen. Robyn looked—appalled, and that made Fiona’s entire soul curdle with shame. She’d read too far into it. She scrambled to her feet, backing away. “Robyn, I’m sorry—”

“No,” Robyn said quickly. She took three hurried steps forward, then stopped in her tracks, nearly reaching out but clearly thinking better of it at the last moment. “Fiona, I didn’t mean—” 

“I know. I know you didn’t. I’m sorry, I—”

“I’m _so_ sorry—”

“I should go.” It was a coward’s way out and she knew it, but Fiona had about thirty seconds of composure left before she dissolved completely and for the first time, she couldn’t do that in front of Robyn. She fumbled with her staff, managing on the third attempt to pick it up and pulling it to her chest like a talisman. “I should—”

She turned and fled rather than try to think of a way to end that sentence. And she tried to pretend, and failed, that she didn’t see Robyn’s aborted attempt to reach after her, or the way her oldest friend slumped back against the bar as the door swung shut at her back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Miscommunication Trope: Bad.  
> Miscommunication Trope In Period Piece With Complicated Archaic Courtship Rules: [chef's kiss]


	5. [Sad Harmonica Music Playing In The Background]

May sat quietly in the entryway to the kitchen.

One ankle crossed over the opposite knee and a ceramic bowl full of cooling lead on the floor beside her chair, she tested one of the new bullets with the back of her hand. Confirming it was safe to touch, she plucked it into her lap, picked up her knife, and carefully shaved off excess from the mold.

She very pointedly did not look at Robyn.

Robyn, who had at this point polished every glass container in the building to a painful sparkle three times over since sunrise, picked up a pint glass and began wiping it down. She very pointedly did not acknowledge being ignored.

They repeated this process for eleven more bullets.

“Idiot,” said May.

Robyn’s jaw clenched. “We’re not having this conversation again.”

“Really!” May’s voice was bright and airy, like sunlight when you had a bad hangover. “And what conversation would _that_ be.”

It was early afternoon, a slow couple of hours; passers-through who’d drop in at this time were rare around here, though with summer fast approaching they’d start getting cowhands through again as ranchers readied their market drives. And for some reason, none of the regulars seemed inclined to show up with Robyn in her current mood.

“Let it _go,_ May.”

“Give me one good reason!”

“Try _I know where you sleep,”_ Robyn snapped.

“You know what? Fuck you.” May threw her knife down; it buried itself point-down an inch deep in the wood between Robyn’s feet, which she was not generous enough to think could possibly be an accident. “I meant it. Give me _one_ good reason to break her heart like that, Robyn, you _could_ have gone after her!”

“And made it worse?” Robyn threw her rag down. “I don’t know how things work where you’re from, but around here when you scare someone off you at least owe them the courtesy of letting them leave!”

 _“Hey,”_ Joanna said, firm, from where she was mending her boots near the cellar door. Robyn winced and pinched the bridge of her nose.

“That was uncalled-for,” she acknowledged.

“No shit,” said May. She looked distinctly unimpressed, but waved off any further attempt at apology. Then, _“All_ you had to do was kiss the woman, Hill. You’re in love with her, she was sighing in your arms. Explain to me where you got lost here.”

“It’s not that simple, May.”

“Oh, I’m sorry!” May sat back, incredulous, elbows over the back of her chair. “Did you never get that talk?! I can draw you a diagram if that’s the problem!”

“May!”

May held up her hands in a silent retraction. “All _right!_ All right. I’m being an ass. Robyn, what _happened?_ Don’t tell me she’s not interested, we all have eyes.”

Robyn took a deep breath and let it out a long, shuddering sigh.

“It’s not about that,” she finally admitted. “There’s no way to...I would be taking advantage. Of her, of my position in this town.”

“Wow,” said May. 

“I’m serious. I’ve...May. You _know_ how I feel about her. I _know_ you know I’ve—helped her out of some tight spots in the past. I’ve bent rules for her I normally don’t.”

Joanna added, with an amused look at May, “You mention this often.”

“I have never in my life seen you charge her for a drink,” May acknowledged.

“She pays her tab,” Robyn protested instinctively. 

“Because _she_ refuses not to.” 

The point was valid, and Robyn didn’t bother arguing. “Exactly. I don’t want her to feel...indebted. Like she owes me whatever I want. And I can’t risk coercing her, even accidentally. May, if I wanted to, if I was the kind of person to...if I wanted to retaliate for being rejected, I could _destroy her life_ in Mantle.”

 _“Wow,”_ said May again, more slowly this time. “I’m not letting people call you ‘Mayor Robyn’ anymore. It’s going to your head.”

“I’m the only place in town,” Robyn argued. “I’m all there is. This is all the community most of the town _has!_ If you want to keep up with what’s been going on in Mantle, this is where you come. All the news from Atlas and the rest of Remnant flows through saloons first. If you just want to get in out of the sun for a few hours and exist, there’s only two options and that’s if you’re human. Mantle’s entire support system exists within these four walls. _That’s_ where I am. And Fiona’s a _shepherd.”_

May’s eyebrows vanished into her hair. She crossed her arms and said, “Oh, _okay._ You’re too good for her now.”

Before Robyn could wrangle her tongue into spitting any of the furious responses spinning around in her head, Joanna heaved a sigh. “You’re not actually that powerful, you know,” she pointed out.

May agreed, “The actual authorities kind of hate you.”

“And I’m _still_ the only real protection she has.” Robyn’s jaw was clenched so hard it ached. “But that’s not what I meant. What happens if we argue, May? She’s all alone out there. If she doesn’t feel like she can come in here and relax unless I’m getting what I want from her...I can’t. I can’t do that to someone. _Especially_ not Fiona. She deserves _somewhere_ she can feel safe.”

May and Joanna exchanged a long look.

“Yeah,” May finally said. This time, there was no heat in it; her indignation had burned itself out, and she mostly just sounded pitying. “You’re doing a great job at that.”

Robyn closed her eyes and swallowed the sudden lump in her throat. After a long pause, Joanna gave another sigh.

“Leave it,” she said softly. “She knows.”

Leather creaked quietly outside; a pair of horses, being tied up next to the water trough. Robyn took a deep breath and shook herself. She had, as she’d just reminded May, a job to do.

 _“She’s_ not the only one hurting,” May snapped. Robyn held up a hand to silence her.

“Not now,” she said. “In private, Marigold.”

“You deserve it,” was the muttered retort.

The doors swung open with a flash of sunlight and a horrible groaning noise.

“Yikes,” commented the young woman who’d just walked through the door. “Creaky floorboards.”

“Well,” her friend allowed. “That’s one way to make an entrance.”

Robyn turned her back to May, who _tsk_ ed loudly behind her teeth and went back to ignoring her.

“Welcome to Mantle,” she called as the newcomers crossed to the bar. “Can I help you?”

“Afternoon.” The blonde raised a hand—a prosthetic, Robyn realized suddenly, gleaming with muted brasswork—and doffed her hat politely, placing it on the bar and sliding sideways onto a vacant stool. “Could I get a Strawberry Sunrise?”

Robyn only reacted with a mild lift of her eyebrows.

“You sure about that, stranger?” She went through the motions of cleaning a tumbler for the fourth time in a row. It helped get her back into a...professional mindset. “Young, new in town, no reputation—most folks would play it safe and keep to whiskey.”

It was intended as a warning, not a challenge; but the young blonde rose to it anyway, lavender eyes hardening.

“That sounds like their problem,” she answered bluntly. “If anyone wants to make something out of it, that says a lot more about _them_ than it does about me.”

Her smaller, darker partner seemed less convinced.

“Yang.” Black feline ears twitched in a clear threat assessment, and the girl kept her voice low. “Maybe we shouldn’t attract attention.”

“Don’t worry, Blake.” The reassurance was genuine, there was a serious note in the blonde’s voice; but after a moment, she flashed a cocky grin and slipped her good hand into her pocket, coming back up with a well-used set of brass knuckles. “We can _handle_ attention.”

In spite of herself, Robyn couldn’t help smiling a bit.

“I respect that.” She set her absurdly clean glass aside and glanced at the row of bottles behind her. “To answer your question...I can get you syrup and hard cider in lemonade.” She gave an apologetic shrug. “Sorry, Fisticuffs. It’s not exactly worth the investment to stock fruit liqueurs around here.”

“That’d be perfect, thanks.”

It occurred to Robyn that it would be very easy to dislike this girl, if there wasn’t such an easygoing, honest friendliness radiating from every pore.

“Usually,” she said, keeping her voice light as she dug out the least objectionable tumbler she could find, “anyone looking for a cocktail would go with the Apricot.”

The words were directed toward the blonde; it was Blake she paid attention to, out of the corner of her eye. Mantle was too small, and had too high a faunus population, for most businesses out here to be able to afford hanging out a ‘no faunus’ sign, no matter how much they wanted to. The Apricot wasn’t the kind of place that _banned_ faunus—but there was a vast, bitter desert between ‘banned’ and ‘welcome’.

Sure enough, there was a hint of a twitch. 

“Yeah.” Yang’s voice was suddenly flat. “We didn’t bother with that place.”

Robyn gave a sympathetic wince. “My condolences,” she told the faunus. “If you need a drink after that, take one on me.”

Blake’s laugh was dark, but she relaxed just enough. “I appreciate the offer.”

Robyn paused, forcing herself to be present in the moment. Blake had a quiet, restrained look about her; there was no naivete in her, she dressed with the brutal practicality of a ranchhand, but something about her whispered a kind of class. “Coffee?” she ventured.

“Tea,” was the response, this time with a real smile. “And rye whiskey.”

All _right_ then. Always the quiet ones.

“That’s ninety lien for the cocktail then and fourteen for the whiskey. But I’ll knock off five if you let me take a good look at that mustang.”

Yang grinned and half-turned to look behind herself. There were two horses tied up outside, visible through the dusty window glass and the swinging doors; and Robyn was clearly _not_ asking after the black appaloosa.

“Thanks. Her name’s Ember—the gelding’s Gambol. I’ve had her from a yearling, she was a project filly.”

Robyn eyed the mare as best she could from this angle, not bothering to keep the approval off her face. “That’s a true buckskin, it looks like. You pick your friends as well as you pick your horses, you’ll do just fine around here.”

She took the compliment with good grace, half-raising her glass in Robyn’s direction with a casual, “Ma’am.”

“We’re only in town for a few days.” Robyn, ducking around May in the doorway as her so-called loyal partner continued to pretend she didn’t exist, gestured to Blake to keep talking while she slid a kettle onto the stove. “But we were told that if we stopped anywhere for a drink, it should be here.”

Robyn stuck her head back around the door, amused. “So you _didn’t_ try the Apricot first then.”

“Eh.” Yang gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “It’s not exactly our style.”

Blake, at least, coughed awkwardly. “I _can_ pay for that tea.”

Robyn shook her head; she’d been the one to offer, after all. As she rejoined them, she asked, “Find you something to eat? We’ve got some dried codfish I haven’t broken into yet.”

Blake’s ears snapped forward. Robyn had enough tact to pretend she hadn’t noticed the kid’s eyes visibly dilating.

Yang sipped her drink. “Could you open a tab, actually?” She had the good manners to ask it _as_ she slid over the cash for her first drink; unknown newcomers ordering expensive cocktails and trying to run a tab without demonstrating that they could pay were rarely received kindly. Robyn herself was a pillar of the community, not a fucking saint. “We’re expecting some friends.”

Robyn was willing enough to accommodate them, if only because the longer she chatted with customers the longer she had until May started verbally tearing her to shreds again.

“Depending on how many friends, I might be able to board you,” she offered. “You said a few days.”

“We’re actually staying with my Uncle Qrow.” Yang was _distinctly_ more open than your average cowhand in these parts. Most people wouldn’t have acknowledged Branwen blood without first building a reputation too impressive to fuck with over it; but it certainly explained her expansive confidence. “So you’ll probably see us again.”

There was an edge of tension in that statement; Robyn, who’d been in Mantle since before Qrow Branwen arrived, gave his niece a warm smile.

“He’s doing well,” she said, less casually than she normally might have. “Popular in town, especially with parents. Not one of my best customers these days, but I’m always glad to have him around for the conversation. Don’t play him at cards.”

She pretended not to see the relief in the kid’s face.

Blake was watching Robyn with more interest than she’d expect. “You’re Robyn, aren’t you?” she asked. “Robyn Hill.”

“Mayor Robyn,” Yang joked. Robyn’s answering grin was painful. “My uncle’s told us a lot about you. He says you do a lot for this town.”

“I try.”

Blake hesitated. “You...used to be a Huntress, didn’t you?”

Robyn shot her an aside glance. “I still _am_ a Huntress, kid. Turning down the Atlas commission doesn’t change that. You get a lot of Grimm around here, and you can’t afford to miss.”

The girl glanced between Robyn and her own fingers, and Yang, before looking back up.

“Have you ever…” She paused again. “Have you ever killed something besides Grimm?”

“Hey,” said Yang, soft and immediate.

Robyn had, in fact, been called on to put down a colt with a broken leg just the week before. She was fairly certain that wasn’t the question being asked.

“When I had to,” she answered quietly. “You don’t have to bring your past out here if you don’t want to, kid. Plenty of people don’t even bring their names.”

The kid sat with that for a minute, then shook her head and held a hand out, unshaking.

“Blake Belladonna,” she said. “I’m not running.”

Her partner put a hand on her shoulder. “Neither of us are,” she said firmly.

Robyn, heart cracking behind a friendly smile, was saved from having to answer by the whistling kettle. May had the grace not to say anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> beehaw


	6. A Lone Stockhand Gazes Mournfully Over The Range

“Robyn,” called May, dangerous friendliness in her tone. “Care to help me solve the mystery of what _exactly_ is happening to our kerosene stores?”

“Uh-oh.” Qrow gave a low, rasping laugh, grinning over his drink. “Someone’s in trouble.”

“Someone’s about to start getting charged double,” Robyn tossed back. “Call Joanna if you need anything.”

Joanna was keeping a distrustful eye on a pair of catfish in a skillet as Robyn let herself through the kitchen after May’s summons. She glanced up and nodded once in acknowledgement, and Robyn kicked the cellar door up into her hand to haul closed behind her.

The worn padlock was hanging by a hook in a shadowed recess at the bottom of the stairs. She slotted it, unlocked, through its latch.

With the door secure, May knelt down to fish out her little notebook, a topographic map of Solitas, and a handful of newspaper clippings.

Those last two hadn’t been part of briefings for a long time.

“Do you have _any idea,”_ May asked by way of an opener, “how hard it is to launder money through a business when the owner refuses to just put it in the bank like a normal person?”

“You may have mentioned it once or twice,” said Robyn, who had gotten this complaint once every three months for the past decade.

It had been seven years since their last major stagecoach robbery; Robyn had been funneling hundreds of thousands of lien into Mantle at an agonizing trickle through the saloon ever since, counting on May to cover it up with clever accounting. She’d only been forced to let Clover at her books twice in that time, and the place had only been searched once; but it was the sole credit of their combined paranoia that they could describe those investigations as ‘only’ a near miss.

Their combined paranoia, and the Marigold family’s insistence on training its _firstborn son_ in the family business.

And yes, there was an argument to be made that Robyn was taking the idealism _slightly_ too far considering the only reason she was not, currently, a highwayman was that until now the money hadn’t run out. But it was— 

Important.

It mattered, the reasons they did this, the difference between what was Robyn’s fairly and what belonged, had _always_ belonged, to the people of Mantle. And May, for all of her hair-trigger temper and cynicism, loved this miserable little town at least as much as Robyn ever had. She’d come alive here, come into flower like a spring bluebonnet when she herself had believed there was nothing left for her.

May might complain incessantly about the added difficulty of keeping half a dozen sets of financial records—but she’d never tried to argue that they shouldn’t.

So they kept a set of viable, realistic, utterly fictional books upstairs, wherein—were it not for Robyn’s open cheating of her own establishment, always passive-aggressively noted down whenever Miss Marigold had clearly discovered some discrepancy—they would still be maintaining a perfectly viable business, though never more than a month’s hardship away from real trouble. 

And May kept track of everything else. The legitimate income from the saloon was kept firmly separate from whatever clever finagling she’d managed this month to work a few thousand extra lien into the bank, split between the three of them.

The latter was never, and would never, be used to subsidize the former. In her strikes against SDC shipments and mail coaches, Robyn had never sought anything more or less than the return of Mantle’s own resources to its citizens. That money was theirs by right, stolen from under them by company-owned stores setting interest rates for credit far higher, knowingly, than company wages would ever be enough to pay back; she was only a conduit for returning it.

The saloon itself, if it turned a profit—which it did, though barely, not nearly by as respectable a margin as it seemed from the official records—was their own; what they earned from that, they could keep with a clear conscience. Everything else they kept meticulous records for to ensure they never touched a single lien that belonged to someone else and was only…temporarily in their care.

May’s increasingly fervent threats to skin Robyn alive if she kept undercutting herself were not a front.

“There is another option,” May said, perfectly professional as Robyn began tracing stagecoach routes on the map. They needed to catch their quarry on its way _to_ Atlas, not from; carrying profits to Schnee, not payment—however pitiful—to the people he exploited. It couldn’t be too far away, because no matter what excuses they made, Robyn’s absence for more than a few days would be remarked upon. The ambush site had to be within reasonable distance of one of their cache sites…

Robyn paused and let the words sink in.

“Not yet,” she said.

“None of this does any _good_ as long as company-store records still exist,” May insisted. “We burn those—”

“And we’ve shown our hand.” Robyn shook her head, heart aching. “And the SDC will have backups. Not _yet._ We keep Mantle’s head above water, and we wait for our chance.”

Reluctant but unable to argue the point, May dipped her head, conceding the point.

Robyn studied the map for a long time before tapping a nondescript stretch of road a day’s hard ride from Mantle. “Three weeks from now,” she decided.

“You’re joking,” said May.

“We can pull it off.”

“That is the worst possible—”

“Clover,” Robyn retorted, and May bit her tongue.

Clover Ebi hadn’t actually bothered showing up in Mantle for months, but his presence in the area would always be a problem. He knew the playbook as well as anyone, and unfortunately, he knew Robyn too well. If he saw a perfect ambush opportunity, he would credit her with being smart enough to take it.

Not, of course, that he would ever admit to suspecting Robyn Hill—who’d been duly investigated multiple times with only circumstantial evidence found against her—of _breaking the law._

Harassing a woman who was innocent under Atlas law would be in violation of his mandate, after all.

Yeah, she hadn’t made any progress on that one either.

“So, just so we’re all on the same page.” May rested her chin on her hands. “The plan here is to intentionally set up a bad ambush, on the logic that it’s _such_ a terrible plan the sheriff won’t insult us by believing we’d be stupid enough to try it.”

“We can pull it off,” Robyn repeated steadily.

May sighed and rubbed her temples. 

“We can,” she acknowledged; then, a warning note in her voice, she said, “This is all _very generously_ assuming we still have a fence.”

Guilt twisted in Robyn’s stomach, but the accusation wasn’t fair regardless. “May.”

“After you turned her down cold after silently courting her for ten _fucking years_ in front of the entire town.” Before Robyn could snap at her again, May held up her hands. “I said I _am_ generously assuming. If it was anyone but Fiona I wouldn’t be. I was insulting _you,_ not her.”

“Well, that’s fine then,” said Robyn, wearily. She stood. “Brief Joanna.”

It was too easy to listen at doorways in this town. Normally, they could manage a group meeting in early midday, when the place was mostly empty—they’d put Forrest in a down on the other side of the cellar door and trust him to bark if anyone approached. Normally, they had Fiona.

She would come through for Mantle’s sake, and for their friendship, certainly. But it had been...a while, now, since Fiona had come in for an evening for the sake of it. Since she’d even dropped in for a drink, though Robyn knew she’d come into town at least once in the interim. Which was exactly what she’d been afraid would happen.

So they had Joanna watching the cellar door for them, and they’d do this in shifts.

“Yes ma’am, _Miss Hill,”_ May said mockingly. She gathered up the map, stagecoach station schedules, and the notebook and locked them securely away; the cellar door never opened with anything in view they didn’t want known about. “I’ll get right on that, ma’am.”

“One of these days you’ll realize I’m legally your employer,” Robyn informed her. Before May could make the very obvious retort, Robyn had slipped the padlock and emerged back into the kitchen. 

She brushed a spider off her shoulder and nodded to Joanna, who moved a string of sausages off the stovetop and ducked down the stairs. Robyn, not breaking stride, returned behind the bar.

“The kerosene was cunningly hidden in plain view in a canister labelled ‘kerosene,’” she informed the general area with a wry smile. She received a round of sensible chuckles. “Mr. Partington! Sorry to keep you waiting. What can I do for you?”

* * *

Fiona worked two fingers under her collar, tugging it away from her sweat-damp throat.

Eyes closed for a brief moment against the merciless summer sun, she leaned on her staff and breathed in the scent of grass. When she opened them again and turned around, black clouds still boiled over the distant northwest mountains. She glared at them. They glared back.

The storm wouldn’t make it all the way out here, of course; they never did. The _lightning_ might, and Fiona wasn’t fond of standing here on open rangeland with a thunderstorm mere miles away. The sheep weren’t happy, either; every twenty minutes or so, another bold ewe tried to move off toward the nearby stream for a drink, and Fiona had to send Forrest racing around to cut it off and drive it back up to the high ground. The lambs were complaining, their mothers were irritable and thirsty, and Fiona’s beloved tup Happy was not earning his name.

But she’d let the sheep drink when she’d driven them across that stream earlier in the day. With heavy rain up in the mountains, she’d be damned if she let them anywhere near a low, water-carved channel until several hours after that rain let up, at the very least. The flow of fast-moving water in what had been a dry creek this morning was tantalizing her flock despite all the mud, but it usually wasn't the _first_ wave that killed you.

It was almost as if, like bad luck, she’d summoned it just by having the thought.

It was a quiet sound at first, distant and faint, just barely above the threshold of something you might have imagined. Barely audible over faint birdsong, the halfhearted rustling of grass in the stagnant summer heat—but the moment of disorienting quiet passed quickly. The whisper of rushing water rose from all sides, directionless, crackling like a prairie fire, before abruptly coalescing into a roar that said it was already far too late.

Fiona, secure on high ground and with her most distant sheep still hundreds of yards removed from the recently-flooded creekbed, could afford to stand back, throw an arm around the neck of her donkey, and wait for the flash flood to pass.

Any minute now—

Abruptly, there rose shouts and whipcracks from somewhere in the canyon, terrified lowing ringing even over the sound of the oncoming flood.

Forrest’s head rose with a snap from where he was lying in the grass, blocking the lambs’ route to the stream. The sheep startled at the yells, shifting uneasily and forming clumps across the hillside. Fiona stiffened, ears darting backward and forward; she turned and pulled herself onto Mutton—

Yes, she had a donkey named Mutton and a breeding ram named Jackass, that wasn’t the point—

—turned and pulled herself onto Mutton’s back, but froze. There was nothing to do, nothing she could do; riding into the mouth of a canyon in flood would not save anyone. But everything in her _screamed_ that she had to _try—_

The herd scrambled from the mouth of the canyon before she had a chance to decide. Wild-eyed cattle bolted down the path of least resistance, sides heaving, bellowing in fear; it was a small herd, maybe twenty head in total, the flood at their heels. And in and among them, flecked with dirt and blood from the mad stampede, a quartet of frantic young ranchhands fought to escape the canyon walls.

The flood, so choked with dust and debris that it was closer to black coffee than any kind of water, finally burst free of the confines of the canyon and charged like a hungry serpent down the dry riverbank.

The point rider checked her horse, jumping the bank out of immediate harm’s way and creating open space for the herd to flee to. One of the others joined her, shouting something to a third that Fiona couldn’t make out over the chaos—

“Yang!” A high, frightened voice rose over the noise of the panicked cattle. _“Get ready to wheel the herd!”_

 _“What?!”_ shouted the young blonde from just above the reach of the sludge, but the fourth rider was already gone.

It was—insane. Fiona would have thought, if there was time for her brain to process what was happening, that it was insane. It happened as if in slow motion, impossibly brave, unspeakably stupid. A young woman—a girl, really—on a trim, unassuming mare, doing her damnedest to race a flash flood downriver.

There was no shouting or flash of spurs. The little blood bay just... _unfolded._ The long lines of a racing thoroughbred emerged from contained stillness with a grace and power that was asked and not demanded, as the pair dodged through and across the herd; flashing red, her inky tail streaming, fearless, nearly laughing, the mare's ears pricked as a long black whip coiled and struck over the heads of the panicking cattle—

Somehow, over their incoherent fear, the herd responded. They turned slightly, just enough, to bring them up the side of the creek at the next turn.

Not fast enough. Filthy water and debris were already beginning to crash into the hind legs of the fleeing herd, nipping at the beautiful thoroughbred’s heels. 

They weren’t going to make it.

The third of the group, driving a little tobiano hard at their heels, pulled a revolver and aimed back along the drowned riverbed in full gallop; before Fiona could begin to fathom the stupidity of _shooting a flash flood_ massive spikes of frozen sludge burst into the air. It was a waste of Dust so mind-boggling that her mind refused to accept it. Full-Dust bullets were rare in _military_ kit, with full Kingdom funding; a ranch hand was mad if she dreamed of _seeing one in person_ someday let alone actually getting to fire one, to have them so casually on hand that you didn’t even have to dig them out before shooting three of them in quick succession into a flood— 

But it slowed the onslaught just enough. It took only seconds for the sheer force of the flood to shatter the ice barriers; but it took less time than that for the herd to open _barely_ enough distance to scramble to safety. 

The reckless little thoroughbred and her rider, who had to be the only person on the planet mad enough to give May and Robyn combined a run for their money, pivoted at nearly a ninety-degree angle at the last second and leaped over an onrushing jagged log as the flood finally caught up to them, landing neatly on the bank just above the waterline.

Somehow, the young wild thing had managed to turn the entire herd back out toward the open range.

Directly at Fiona.

 _“Shit.”_ She kicked Mutton into a startled canter perpendicular to the oncoming stampede and shouted, “Forrest! Come by! _To me!”_

He leapt to obey, racing clockwise around the flock to drive them out of the way, but even if Fiona had given that command the moment she heard shouting in the canyon there wouldn’t have been time.

_“Yaaah!”_

Fiona swore again, this time much more violently, as a young woman on a stunning golden mustang nearly sideswiped her off her ass in more ways than one. The cattle, exhausted now and frankly having gone through enough in the last five minutes, didn’t want to be turned yet again; but the point rider had shown up again as well, racing in hard and silent on a black horse from the opposite direction, and the scissor effect and the shock of the second ‘threat’ brought the herd back around at the last possible second.

Forrest barked, less at any of the newcomers in particular and more at the general state of the world; a low whistle from Fiona, and a mild, “Look back,” were enough to steady him enough to settle into grumpily gathering the flock back together again. As he could do that just fine on his own time, Fiona turned her attention to the cowhands. Three of them, including the bold swing rider with the thoroughbred, had gone off after the cattle; the fourth had stayed behind.

“Whoa,” the blonde murmured, checking her mustang with a mild touch as it snorted, trying to move off with the others. The hand on the reins was mechanical; she had the mustang in a gentle curb, trusting to leg cues to turn the mare and letting her prosthetic hand, which was less flexible than the other, handle only stopping cues.

Clever, Fiona acknowledged.

 _“Easy,_ girl. Hey,” the blonde added over her shoulder in greeting. “Sorry about that, ma’am.”

They’d just gone out of their way—risked their own safety, in fact—to avoid harming her. Still, Fiona very casually freed her hunting rifle from where it was slung beside Mutton’s saddle. 

The insistence by Fiona and everyone who knew her that she was too cautious of rancher barons and too aware of _her place in the world_ to risk taking her sheep onto the range was an elaborate, blatant fiction. She could buy fodder, yes, and she did, most years; but a woman had to eat, as well. She needed to own clothing, purchase ammunition, and occasionally do literally anything that required money of any sort.

The irony that she'd had tens of thousands of lien buried in unmarked glass jars scattered across a hundred and sixty acres of homestead at any given time over the last decade was not lost on her, but that wasn’t _her_ money.

Usually, she brought her flock out on the range in winter, the wet season, when grass was less dear and the cattlemen were more inclined to let the herds wander without direct supervision. But the drought had been...bad, this year. She’d needed a second boost to her fodder, and she’d run the risk of, just barely, ducking off her own property. It wasn’t illegal. It was just a good way to get shot.

Especially by anyone with the kind of resources on hand to throw Dust around that way.

“No harm, no foul,” Fiona replied. Somehow the other three had brought their small herd of cattle—cows, she realized now, all female and most with calves—to a halt; the thoroughbred and the young woman with the Dust rounds and the gorgeous chestnut tobiano were slowly working them back in this direction, politely steering well clear of the sheep. The dark young woman on the black appaloosa had come ahead at a swift trot, and reined expertly to a stop.

“We didn’t realize you were here,” the woman apologized. “I’m Blake; this is Yang. You’re Fiona, right?”

She had faunus ears, cat ears; still, that wasn’t a guarantee of anything. Fiona dipped her head, tense but polite, and lied, “I was worried about flooding in the only land of mine near here; I only brought the sheep out until it’s safe. I’m a homesteader, I normally don’t touch the range—I understand this is cattle country.”

The blonde frowned. “What are you talking about?” she asked bluntly. “Rangeland’s public, isn’t it?”

Blake winced and exchanged a look with Fiona.

“It’s...not that simple,” she said. “Ranchers say terrible things about sheep—that they destroy the grass, that they make the land unusable…”

“Well, so do cattle,” Yang pointed out. “That’s stupid.”

Blake’s huff of laughter was about half as deeply bitter as Fiona felt every day.

“Well,” she said. “Think about it. Sheep cost about four to six hundred lien each for breeding stock. Cattle can cost five times that. So for ten thousand lien, you can _almost_ get enough to found a viable herd of sheep, but…”

“Not cattle.” Yang looked like she’d caught up a while back. “Yeah. Dad says the only way to actually break into cattle is if you already have the money to compete. That’s why the SDC owns half the ranches around here these days.”

The kid on the tobiano had rejoined them. “And men like my father _think_ they own all of it,” she muttered, looking out over the grassland. “It’s _not_ legal to fence off rangeland; he doesn’t own it, any more than any other rancher. But he’s more than willing to have his rivals killed if they cut the fences to access land that’s as much theirs as anyone else’s. Especially if they’re...someone he sees as lesser.”

Fiona, who was perfectly capable of speaking for herself, chimed in. “Sheep are less expensive to buy and need less space to keep, so more faunus are shepherds and more shepherds are faunus. So nobody likes sheep!” She flicked her ears irritably. “Thanks for the history lesson."

“It’s dangerous,” Blake confirmed, voice quiet. “To be caught alone with sheep out here.”

"Is that a _threat?”_

“Wh—no!” Yang looked stricken. “Listen, I’m sorry. I just wanted to make sure we hadn’t hurt any of your spring lambs. We’d pay for them if we had.”

“Well.” A ghost of a smile crossed Blake’s face. “Weiss would pay for them.”

_“Hey!”_

Yang grinned, then turned and tipped her hat politely to Fiona. “We’ll leave you be, ma’am,” she promised, then paused. “Hey. You’re Robyn’s girl, right? That’s what everyone says.”

Fiona’s chest did something very bad.

“I wouldn’t listen to what everyone says about me in Mantle, personally,” she said, managing to make it sound joke-adjacent. “Why?”

“She gave us a message for you?” Yang didn’t sound so sure anymore, so probably Fiona’s delivery hadn’t been as joke-adjacent as she hoped. “Uh...right. Anyway. She said to ask you if you’d pick her up some flowers when you brought the flock to market?”

Fiona kept her expression perfectly still despite her suddenly pounding heart. She hadn’t heard that in five years.

“What kind?” she asked lightly.

“Uh...a dozen autumn lantana?” Yang looked to Blake for confirmation. “And a week’s worth of Northern verbena, if there’s any left.. Hey, don’t lantana only bloom in spring?”

The northwestern drop point marked by a cluster of lantana flowers at a certain grid point—twelve four-foot units north and seven west.

“It’s an inside joke,” Fiona lied. “Thanks. If you see her before I do, tell her I’ll get them.”

Yang gave a languid shrug. “Well, we probably won’t be back in Mantle for a while. My dad’s going into dairy,” she explained, gesturing toward the cows. “Beef is too cutthroat. We’re just here because we were going to Amity to grab his cows and bring them back toward Vale.”

“I’m glad we could deliver the message,” Blake added. “Tell Robyn we said hello, when you see her.”

“Hey, yeah!” agreed Yang. She hesitated, then asked, “So, are you _really_ the one who shot her last week?”

Fiona blinked.

_“What?!”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're in some WILD WEST SHIT now y'all.


	7. Stand And Deliver

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Robyn and the Happy Huntresses employ the high-level criminal enterprise technique called Lying Your Goddamn Asses Off.

Somewhere in the distance, a lonely train whistle echoed over the rapidly-darkening desert.

“Ten o’clock from the Mantle junction,” Robyn murmured, eyes closed.

Mantle itself was a full day’s travel from the nearest railway; the sacrifice in efficiently transporting Dust from the mines that way was balanced with the equal difficulty in stealing it and getting away clean. There were guards around the processing facility, and too damn many of them found their way into town—Robyn didn’t let them through the doors, and there’d been a number of suspicious fires over the years over that specific issue.

Eventually, she’d made her point. SDC goons went to the Apricot, if they came into town at all.

The Mantle Junction and the _actual town_ of Mantle had very little to do with each other. The rail line ended at the Atlesian military outpost and the thriving support network that had sprung up around it, not the pre-existing town from which it had taken its name. 

And a fat lot of good the military had done the people of Mantle. Supposedly they were all the way out there so that they were well-positioned to respond to multiple small towns in the event of Grimm incursions; in practice, by the time Atlas uniforms were near enough to do anything, Mantle had handled their Grimm problem on its own.

Robyn opened her eyes. “Twenty minutes,” she said quietly.

Joanna’s lips twitched. “That’s assuming the train left on time.”

“We’re assuming that.”

“That train _never_ leaves on time,” Joanna pointed out.

Robyn shot her a look. In the dark it would have been next to impossible to see it, but it was obeyed regardless.

This was, as it happened, a terrible place for an ambush. 

There was a playbook. If you were planning to rob a stagecoach you wanted good visibility, a narrow pathway, and a reasonably steep hill. The coach would have to slow down, and with visibility you’d have intimidation on your side and clear lines of sight. 

No shots would have to be fired; no one would have to get hurt.

And there were a number of perfect ambush locations within riding distance of Mantle, as it happened. But with Clover and his gang based out of the junction now...the man was just intelligent enough to make his stupidity galling, and he knew how this worked, and he had an _infuriating_ skill at making a lucky guess.

So they were ambushing a bank stagecoach at night, under a new moon, on what was mostly open rangeland.

She swung down from Spark and let Joanna ride off, back down the road toward the junction; she’d hide the mustang off the road, down a hidden culvert they’d identified earlier. Robyn herself pulled a kerchief over her face, clapped May bracingly on the thigh, and said, “Your move, Marigold. Go out there and look pretty.”

“I love this part of the plan,” May responded, voice flat, and Robyn walked about twenty paces off the road to settle among a cluster of low shrubs and rocks.

May and Huntress stayed where they were, relaxed and unmoving at the top of a shallow rise, silhouetted against a backdrop of stars.

Fifteen minutes later—the train had not, in fact, left on time—they heard hoofbeats.

Only in lurid stories did a bank coach gallop at blistering speed across a black desert, bands of whooping outlaws racing alongside. Six bright bays approached at a quick but reasonable trot, a heavily-loaded stagecoach swaying behind them; the horses were well-trained, the driver was experienced, and the second man in the driver’s seat spotted the highwayman in plenty of time.

The horses didn’t alter their pace, and May didn’t so much as twitch the rifle lying across her lap. A bank stagecoach would not politely rein to a halt for an armed woman blocking its route at night; the coach’s gunman shouted a single warning, then brought the shotgun to his shoulder—

At exactly the range Robyn had counted on.

She was faster. A single pistol crack shattered the desert night; the man cried out, weapon dropping from his ruined hand and flying apart under the wheels. May’s grip shifted, a casual practiced movement; not to raise the rifle, but to lower it toward the ground. A second sharp retort of gunfire—and even the well-trained bank horses squealed and shied, as the shot ignited a double line of Fire and Gravity Dust across their path, fifty feet in either direction and curving back to trap the coach.

It was, briefly, a picture out of hell; the masked gunwoman on an elegant black horse, still as stone, framed against burning red as scarlet tongues of flame leaped up to lick the sky, and the world warped around her, knocking already-flinching horses back firmly on their heels.

In the handful of seconds before the driver might have managed to get them back under control and charge the Dust barrier—it was only a quick-burning line of poorly-refined ground crystals, nothing but gunpowder—May nudged Huntress beside one of the lead horses and casually clipped a lead rein to its bridle.

Joanna joined them at a low, easy canter, rifle ready but not raised; and Robyn, pistol aimed coldly at the bleeding shotgun rider, stepped out onto the road.

“Stand and deliver,” announced May.

Robyn rolled her eyes. “There’s actually no need for that.”

“Your money or your life.”

 _“No one else is getting hurt,”_ Robyn insisted. She kept well back of the coach, holding the driver at range; with a quick glance to the side, she nodded to Joanna and then turned back. “We’re not here to rob you,” she told the man.

“Coulda fooled me, lady,” he spat back.

“Easy,” Robyn cautioned. “We’re not thieves.”

“Aren’t we?” muttered May.

Robyn ignored her. Low and steady, she informed the driver, “We’re not here for anything that isn’t already ours. I’m sorry about your hand,” she added. “I have to protect my people first.”

“Go fuck yourself,” he growled, which was fair.

“Here,” Robyn said quietly. Without lowering her gun, she held out her right hand; May made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat, but tossed her a small bottle of cheap rotgut—a refilled bottle carefully chosen to be the single most common brand in the area, and thus untraceable. She tossed it up to the man; SDC guard uniforms or not, these men weren't her real enemy. “Wash it out, you’ll get blood poisoning.” 

Joanna, who was already going through the stagecoach lockboxes, gave a low whistle from inside. 

“How do we feel about gold bullion?” she called.

“That it’s not ours,” Robyn called back.

“You’re _killing_ me, boss. Fine. I’ve got it.” There was a click, and then a lockbox flew unceremoniously out of the stagecoach, followed by Joanna.

May immediately dropped her hold on the lead horse, backing Huntress off; the fire had almost burned to nothing now, and the way forward was clear.

The driver didn’t break eye contact as Robyn also moved back. “What,” he said, aggressively disdainful. “That’s it?”

She raised an eyebrow he wouldn’t be able to see. “Well, you’re welcome to empty your pockets if you feel like it,” she offered. “But I did _say_ I didn’t want anything from you.”

“Right. Pockets. Yeah.” The driver reached toward his hip; Robyn, left hand still keeping a pistol trained on his friend, opened her mouth to clarify that she’d been joking and had a bullet in her right arm before she could take a breath.

The two gunshots rang out nearly in unison, barely staggered; they might have been two halves of the same retort, more than echoes of one another. The driver had gotten his shot off first—but only just, and he didn’t live to know he’d hit his target. Joanna had hit hers, too.

 _“Let him go!”_ Robyn barked, as the shotgun driver took advantage of the chaos to whip the horses into a gallop, blowing past May as she raised her rifle as well. “It’s _done!”_

“You’re insane!” May had hesitated, reflexively, at the order; now she rounded on Robyn in a rage, half-hysterical as Joanna dropped to the ground and pried Robyn’s fingers off the gushing wound to bind it. “You’re _insane,_ that was the _stupidest_ —in three hours every lawman in Solitas is going to know this was you! They have a _perfect_ description, Robyn!”

“Scream my name a little louder,” Robyn muttered through the daze of pain. “He might be out of earshot already, I’d hate for him not to hear you.”

“Stop it! You can’t _downplay_ this one!”

“We don’t _kill people_ just because they can identify us!”

“They were always going to have a description,” Joanna pointed out. “We planned for that, May.”

“We didn’t plan for that description including ‘ringleader has a _fresh gunshot wound_ in her upper right arm’!”

“No one has to know it’s fresh.” Robyn gripped Joanna’s elbow with her good arm. “How bad is it?”

“Well, you got shot,” Joanna informed her. She held out a leather belt and relented, “It’s about to get a lot worse. Bite this.”

Robyn, seeing a second bottle of moonshine in her other hand, did not argue the point.

When she came to again, she gave herself only a few minutes to take deep breaths against the pain before making Joanna help her struggle back to her feet.

“She’s got a plan,” Joanna announced.

 _“That,”_ May snapped, “is how we got _in_ this situation to begin with.” But she reached out and gripped Robyn under her left arm, helping her stagger toward Huntress.

Robyn sucked several shallow breaths between her teeth before she was able to speak.

“Pick a drop and hide the lockbox,” she told Joanna. To May, she said, “We need to get back to Mantle. And count our blessings.”

“Such as?” said May, incredulous.

Robyn managed a weak smile. “He _could_ have hit one of the horses,” she said. “That’d be a lot harder to hide.”

* * *

It took two days to catch up to them.

“Clover!” Robyn called cheerfully. “And here I thought you were never coming back. Well, you can’t blame a girl for dreaming. What can I get you.”

“Where were you last night, Robyn.”

Well. Straight to the point, then. He’d stalked in with a grim expression, Marrow Amin anxiously following in his wake, and an uncharacteristic pistol at his hip, which didn’t bode well. Harriet, arms crossed at his left hand, looked equal parts pissed and anticipatory, and Robyn fought to keep her shoulders relaxed.

She was holding a glass in her right hand, low and casual, where she could make a show of cleaning it out for the sake of the Sheriff’s party. Even that was just barely on the right side of agony.

She blinked, transferring the glass to her left hand to set it aside, as her right didn’t have that level of movement.

“There are more polite questions to ask a lady,” she said. “Why? Did something happen?”

“Don’t play stupid,” Harriet snapped.

“Easy, Hare.” Clover fixed Robyn with a sad, unyielding look. “Answer the question. And If you tell me you were here, I’m taking you in, because I know for a fact you weren’t. You were seen leaving town on that mustang just after sunset.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Robyn. Masking suspicious movements by indulging in them every so often for legitimate reasons was the oldest trick in the book. “I was out at the Partingtons’ last night, Clover. They’ve got coyotes who’ve been after their chickens, with John working night shifts in the mines and Paige up with the little ones all day they can’t exactly mount a midnight watch.”

“Right.” He placed two hands on the bar. “And where were you three nights ago, when a bank stagecoach on its way out of Mantle Junction was robbed? Come clean with me, Robyn. It’ll go easier for you.”

“I was probably _asleep,”_ she said. “Just like the last five times you’ve tried to pin me for _highway robbery._ How many times are we going to do this, Clover?”

Clover sighed. “The only thing touched in the robbery was the Schnee Dust Company safe. No valuables, no gold; only lien earmarked for delivery to SDC regional coordinators. It wasn’t subtle, and it clearly wasn’t bandits. You wear your heart on your sleeve, but you went too far this time.”

Thankfully, she’d had more than enough opportunities to practice indignant fury with Clover Ebi. “You cannot be serious. _That’s_ your evidence? Not everyone in the world who doesn’t like you is automatically a highwayman, you know, Clover!”

“Robyn, this time there’s a description. Three women, a blonde ringleader.”

“Oh, well, take me away in chains then,” she snapped. “How can I argue with such compelling evidence!”

 _“Including a tall woman riding a black Arabian,”_ Clover finished forcefully. “The surviving witness got a very good look at the profile. Robyn, this isn’t a game anymore. The driver was killed.”

“Got her, sir.” Elm Ederne shouldered her way in from the back room, dragging May by one arm, the long wrapped ponytail wound securely around her wrist. “Vine has the other one in the stables.”

Robyn closed her eyes, took a long breath through her nose, and counted to ten.

“Speaking of stables,” she said in a mild voice. “You said this was a stagecoach leaving Mantle Junction?”

“What did I _just_ say about playing stupid?” demanded Harriet.

“Right. So, taking that as a yes...that would put this robbery almost forty miles from here.”

Clover’s face confirmed this, and Robyn heaved another sigh, placed her right hand in her pocket and pinched the bridge of her nose with her left.

“Qrow,” she said patiently, eyes closed.

Qrow, at the end of the bar, took his sweet time finishing off his whiskey.

"Buddy,” he finally said. “You’re just about as stupid as you look. That horse has been dead lame for a week. _Anyone_ in town could have told you that.”

For the first time, Clover looked taken aback.

Robyn shook her head. “Convenient,” she said. “How the only information you _apparently_ have is a vague description of the most distinctive horse in the region. I’d love to know how May and Huntress _somehow_ ended up forty miles away while the horse can’t walk, but I suppose we can’t blame your so-called witness for not knowing that.”

Clover hesitated. Harriet didn’t.

“Can you prove that?” she demanded, bright eyes like ice. Robyn raised an eyebrow.

“May,” she said over her shoulder. “Bring Huntress around the front for the Sheriff, please.”

“She’s staying exactly where she is,” Harriet snapped. “I’ll get the stupid—”

“Don’t _touch_ my horse!”

“All _right!”_ Clover stepped between them. “Marrow, go back to the stables and bring the Arabian around. Tell Vine to bring Greenleaf while you’re out there. We can resolve this like reasonable people.”

“That’ll be a change of pace,” commented Robyn.

 _“You_ can shut your mouth,” said Harriet. Robyn gave a half-shrug and crossed her arms as best she could, leaning back against the wall. “Clover, you can’t _seriously_ be listening to her _again!_ It’s the only explanation that makes sense!”

“We’ll see, Hare.” Clover’s tone was thoughtful now. “She’s not wrong. It’s a vague description, and if the relief driver was lying about that…”

“Then what?” Harriet wasn’t falling for it, which was unfortunate. “He shot himself in the hand, killed the driver, dug out a lockbox full of lien and threw it out the window, and then drove home?”

“Wow, that’s a mystery all right,” said Robyn brightly. “Let’s see. A lockbox full of untraceable cash mysteriously disappears, and then the man who was meant to be delivering it shows up with a bullet wound and a dead partner, weaving some story about recognizing the most well-known horse in southern Solitas and being robbed by its owner—who, if you remember, plenty of folks who aren’t from around here don’t trust on principle anyway.”

“I’m Atlesian too, Robyn,” Clover said soothingly. “Those family ties aren’t important to me. And I just admitted that if you’re telling the truth the rest of the story starts to look suspect.”

Outside the swinging doors, Marrow was cautiously leading Huntress back and forth in the street. She was clearly favoring her left hind leg—had been for, as Qrow had said, a week. They’d made just _enough_ of a show of it, of course. May doted on that mare; she’d been personally wrapping the afflicted ankle in herb-packed bandages each day, walking her out in front of the saloon to monitor the bad leg. Nearly everyone in Mantle had seen Huntress’ dramatic limp by this point.

It was amazing what a sharp piece of rock—not dangerous, just uncomfortably placed under the bandage so that it dug into the skin when she moved—could accomplish. They’d always removed the stone the moment the little show was over, of course. 

“Mmm,” murmured Clover, almost to himself.

“Looks like a horse that could cover forty miles in a night to me,” said Robyn, ever helpful. “Oh, but she only took the cash and nothing else, of course. You know, the liquid assets. And he _heroically_ escaped with a convincing flesh wound that—you said his hand?—conveniently gives him an excuse to retire somewhere far away.”

Clover and his lieutenant exchanged a long look. Clover appeared conflicted. Harriet appeared approximately five seconds from chewing glass.

“Well,” Clover finally said. “I can’t argue with that. We’re sorry to have bothered you, Robyn.”

“What?!” said Harriet. Clover ignored her, looked Robyn dead in the eye, and held out his right hand.

Robyn’s blood ran cold.

“...Not feeling particularly sportsmanlike at the moment,” she informed him. “Get out.”

“I left out a part of the description,” said Clover. “Shake.”

Trying to keep her expression more ‘irritated but quizzical’ than terrified, Robyn tried. She did her absolute best to simply extend her arm and grasp his hand, and got halfway there before the blood drained from her face and she had to pull it back to her side.

Clover looked sad. Harriet, on the other hand, looked like her birthday had come early.

“Something wrong with your arm there, Hill?” she grinned.

Robyn glared poison at her.

“It’s _fine,”_ she bit out. “I got grazed, it’s just a flesh wound. Dr. Polendina saw it last week.” More accurately, Dr. Polendina was a smart man who would back her up first and demand an explanation later. “It was _healing_ until _someone_ asked me to strain it!”

“Last week?” Clover hummed. “We’ll be following up on that. What happened?”

Harriet bared her teeth. “Bet you anything she wants us to believe that was a coyote, too.”

Robyn muttered darkly under her breath. Harriet, high on victory, leaned on the bar and smirked. 

“Wanna repeat that?”

Robyn glared. “I said _Fiona shot me!_ All right? I wasn’t exactly advertising it! I rode out to bring her some flowers and check on her and she _shot_ me!”

“Ha!” Qrow, who’d reached across and under the bar to help himself to a refill, tossed it back with relish. “Good for her. Serves you right.”

Half the saloon burst out laughing. Robyn didn’t actually have to fake the flush that crept up her neck. What the hell had May been spreading around Mantle, anyway?

“Sure.” Harriet let her go, but clearly didn’t intend for her to go far. “We completely believe that horseshit.”

“It wasn’t on _purpose!”_ Robyn protested. “I startled her, all right, Clover? She’s alone out there, she gets twitchy. I thought I told you to get out!”

“Right.” Clover crossed his arms. “Fine. I believe you.”

“Clover—!”

“Enough, Harriet. Robyn, one more question.” He gave a grim smile. “What—”

* * *

“—kind of flowers, exactly?”

Fiona blinked.

“Excuse me?”

Harriet Bree was in a rare mood even for her; Storm, fidgeting violently under her, reflected her cold fury in a perfect contrast. It was even starting to get to Mutton, who was more than a little nervous about being this close to a big, angry stallion.

“Don’t get fucking cute,” snapped Bree. “Your _girlfriend’s_ out there spinning us some bullshit alibi—”

“Come on, Hare,” pleaded Marrow. “You’ve been like this all day, it’s not _her_ fault.” At Harriet’s acidic glare, he held up his hands and nudged Ace a few steps closer to Fiona.

Fiona very conspicuously did _not_ go for her gun.

“Listen,” said Marrow. “Robyn claims she came out here a little over a week ago to bring you flowers, and that’s how she got that bullet wound in her arm, that she snuck up on you by accident.”

“Yes, sir,” said Fiona, who was going to kill Robyn for whatever stupid thing she’d gotten into but would die before she failed to corroborate a cover story.

Marrow smiled. “Thanks. Can you confirm what kind of flowers they were?”

Fiona’s mind went blank.

Obviously, Robyn had never brought her flowers. Ever, actually, but especially not since—not recently. And they had so many flower-based code signals, but—maybe the Sheriff’s party had broken the code and wanted her to accidentally confirm the location of the dead drop. Or maybe they’d just been trying to trap Robyn in a lie. Was Fiona meant to use the same signal the young ranch hands she’d run into just the day before had passed along?

No, she realized even as she opened her mouth to politely answer that she’d been given a bundle of lantana. No, that was wrong. They had a strict policy, agreed on years ago. The cache codes were off-limits for anything but legitimate signals. They would never use them for anything else.

That only left _every other type of flower in the world,_ and she didn’t have time to think, she was meant to just know off the top of her head—

“Desert primrose,” she responded, shocking herself with the ease of the answer, hearing it come out of her mouth without thinking. Judging by the mild shock on Marrow Amin’s face, he hadn’t expected her to give the right answer either, and she didn’t have to fake her smile. “It’s delicate, it looks like the kind of soft eastern flower that would shrivel up and die out here. But they’re actually one of the hardiest wildflowers on the range. They’ll outlast anything else, in a drought. She always said they reminded her of me.”

There was a short pause. Her pulse thudded dully in her ears.

“Right,” said Marrow, voice considerably softer now. “Thank you, ma’am. We’re sorry to have bothered you.”

Behind him, Harriet Bree said, _“Fuck!”_


	8. You Gotta Have A Railway Shootout (And Other Stories)

“Get _down!”_

Robyn got off a single shot at a circling prairie sabyr; she took it cleanly through the eye, but had to dive for cover between the cars of the sluggish Junction Express as a swarm of Nevermore dive-bombed her.

A deafening shotgun blast; lead pinged off the reinforced Grimm shutters of the nearest car as half the flock exploded into dust and the rest scattered. It was a freight wagon, not a passenger coach, but still.

 _“Watch it,_ Qrow!”

“Hey,” Qrow protested. “We’re doing our best, here! Look out—”

Robyn turned, left hand coming up; before she could fire at the pair of demonic bobcats about to leap on her from behind a series of rapid-fire shots scattered around them. One cat was torn apart; the other was thrown from the roof of the train, and Robyn finished it off.

A young woman slid along the hot metal roof of the freight car, gripping the side and swinging over the edge so that the second bunch of Nevermore rushed over her head. She wasn’t dressed for the rangeland; close-fitting and the fabric was fine and soft, boots oiled to a shine, a bandolier of shining bullets across her chest where it would do absolutely no good in a fight. Even May had possessed more sense, when she first showed up, and May _still_ hadn’t quite figured out how to wear normal clothes. 

The getup was half flash—but there was just enough substance to catch Robyn’s attention. She wore a dark, wide-brimmed hat and smoked glass over her eyes that Robyn frankly envied—they were, admittedly, liable to shatter if you took a fall and blind you, but no more than any other kind of glasses, and they would cut the awful glare from the high-noon desert. Plenty of fine lifelong ranch hands retired in the end not because their bodies couldn’t handle the work anymore, but because their vision gave out; fisherman’s eye, from the constant white glare. 

And she held a military-grade repeating rifle in a grip that said she knew how to use it.

“I don’t know who you are or what you’re doing here,” the young woman told Robyn shortly. “But help us drive the Grimm off and we can figure that out later.”

“Fine by me,” agreed Robyn. “Help me up.”

The young woman slung the repeater over her back; Robyn, who did not like holstering her pistol during a Grimm attack but was not stupid enough to try bearing her entire weight with her right arm any time soon, offered her left and let the kid haul her across the gap and onto the ladder.

“We’ve got incoming!” she shouted, while Robyn dragged herself one-handed on top of the freight car. Robyn took a potshot that nailed a second sabyr in the throat and rolled to her knees, bracing herself and taking advantage of the better vantage point.

Unseen, from further down the train, a male voice yelled “On it!”

‘Incoming’ in this case meant—and she sighed with the realization that this was going to be one of those days—a trio of incoming Wronghorn Grim to go with the weaker, faster harrying packs swarming over the train.

“Qrow!” The train, which had slowed down when a conductor had recognized them in order to let Robyn swing aboard, was beginning to pick up speed again. And Qrow’s big black quarter horse was a legend—in his day. The finest cutter in the world, which Harbinger very well might have once been, still couldn’t keep up with a train at full speed. “Wronghorns at four o’clock, Springers coming in fast!” She turned to the young woman, who appeared to be commanding a team. “Can one of your people get him onboard?”

The girl answered grimly, “We can try. He may have to hope most of them follow the train. _Fox! Get a stock car open!”_

“No time,” Robyn countered. “Brace yourselves!”

The first Wronghorn slammed steel-hard meter-long horns into the side of a passenger coach; screams erupted inside, and the train tilted at a heart-stopping angle before settling with a groan back onto the tracks.

“We can’t take another hit like that!”

Robyn suppressed the urge to snap at the girl for saying what she already knew; she was clearly just leading her team, it was Robyn who was the interloper.

Ahead, the door of a boxcar slid open and a massive young man leaned out from the side, a cavalry saber in his right hand. The Wronghorn drove in again; he lifted himself one-handed and kicked out, bracing his feet against the nearest horn with a strained cry; he managed to shove the beast off, and, momentum spent, it fell back and away from the car. A second attempt only scraped ineffectually off the siding, and the girl with the repeating rifle fired three times into its shoulder before Robyn, with a clear line the back of its head, took it out.

“Nice,” commented the young woman. 

Robyn gave a half-bow they absolutely did not have time to waste on. Then, _“Qrow, watch out!”_

He’d seen them, of course.

The first Wronghorn had rushed in ahead of the others; the remaining pair, it seemed, were older and smarter. The two massive bulls, a discordant metallic tone under their lowing, had registered Qrow as a threat—and as the only armed assailant still isolated from the rest. Heads down, red eyes burning, they moved to pinion him from both sides, and his horse—a once-great stallion well past his prime—was starting to flag.

Robyn realized what was about to happen the moment before they moved.

Retired or not—Harbinger was _still_ the greatest cutter in the world.

Qrow let the Wronghorns approach from either side, keeping pace with the train now in a quick canter but only just; these old, creaky engines took their time getting up to speed, but Robyn figured in about ninety seconds the express would be moving too fast to catch even on a fresh horse. Branwen and his horse, however, had more immediate concerns than the train. He broke into a flat gallop, luring the Wronghorns into sprinting after him. The Grimm pressed closer, closer—

A near-invisible twitch of the reins, and Harbinger’s eyes glinted with malice.

Midstride, the stallion slammed on the brakes. Even on the hard sun-baked earth it was enough to send dirt dovetailing dramatically on either side as he nearly dragged his haunches through the dust. The Wronghorns trying to crush the pair between their shoulders crashed hard into one another instead, three-meter horns tangling; distracted and enraged they half-checked as if to turn and face their lost enemy, before visibly remembering the buffet of terror from the train—but it was too late now. Harbinger, leaping back into a long ground-eating canter with barely a second’s pause from his sudden stop, was between them and the train.

Qrow, Robyn thought as they started to leave the trio behind, was at this point an afterthought.

Harbinger was _dancing._

For such a powerful horse, with a sleepy, low-to-the-ground carriage, he moved like black lightning in his element. The Wronghorns were forced to a stop by the sheer impossibility of facing him; one impaled the other through the eye trying to turn. They tried to dodge, tried to charge; Harbinger, whirling, crouching low to the ground like a dog trying to get the Grimm to play with him, blood marring his wide white face, matched them a step and a half ahead at every twitch, holding them at bay, heedless of the scything horns.

Qrow had kept a hand on the reins while his horse worked mostly as a formality; he snapped the shotgun to his shoulder now and fired point-blank into the face of a distracted Grimm. The other, streaming black flakes where its eye had been gouged out by its double, sloughed off to one side. 

Harbinger let it by at a signal Robyn had missed; Qrow spun him on the spot and galloped alongside the train but had his shotgun put away. Robyn lay flat on the roof of the freight car—but realized with a spike of frustration that without being able to use her right arm she couldn’t lean far enough to get a shot off without the very real risk of hitting _Qrow_ instead. 

A stockwhip lashed out from between two train cars, wrapping around the Wronghorn’s throat and jerking it off-balance. Before it could recover a series of pistol shots into its shoulder as it was half-jerked backward made it stumble and fall. 

The moment it hit the dust, as the gap between cars hidigin whoever was shooting flashed past it, there was a thunderous shotgun blast. The Grimm’s chest exploded, and it dissolved into dust so cleanly that the unseen gunman was able to retrieve their whip without the body’s dead weight pulling out of of their hands.

Robyn was already back on her feet and moving; Qrow and Harbinger had fallen dramatically behind while facing down the Wronghorns. They were still abreast of the train, and were actually outstripping it for now; but they had seconds at best, and there were still Grimm chasing behind.

A lean, dark young man with auburn hair whistled from where he was hanging alongside a boxcar with open slats. _“Huntsman!”_ he shouted. “Here!”

Qrow glanced over his shoulder and raised a hand in acknowledgement. Robyn, leaping the gap onto the roof of the stock car, was almost disappointed when the young man pried off the lock with a crowbar before she got there.

“Get clear,” she told him, unnecessarily.

The kid jumped inside the car, hauling the door back and holding it open; Harbinger, in full gallop now, fell back until he was just barely ahead of the open door; then, in a leap of faith Robyn was utterly certain May could never have gotten out of Huntress in a million years, the horse made a blind sideways leap toward the moving train.

Robyn heard the impact as Harbinger hit the floor of the car; a hastily-thrown rope around his flailing hindquarters kept him from immediately falling out under the wheels, and the door was hauled closed again the moment whoever was inside pulled him clear.

The overdressed young woman from near the head of the train had followed on Robyn’s heels. She immediately let herself down into the stock car; her massive friend, who’d followed behind her, was more polite.

“Here,” the young man offered. “I’ll give you a hand down.”

Robyn was not too proud to accept, all things considered.

By the time she got inside the car, Harbinger was rolling to his feet. Qrow, who’d had the good sense to hook his left leg around the saddlehorn before that leap and as a result had not crushed every bone in his leg when Harbinger rolled heavily on that side, immediately knelt and began checking his legs over for damage.

“Right,” said Robyn’s young friend from the front of the train. “We’ve got maybe two minutes before the Springers catch us up. Thanks for the assist, by the way. We had it handled, but we appreciate the help.”

“Be polite, Coco,” chided a slim, delicate-looking young woman leaning against the back of the car.

“I _am_ being polite. I’m also being honest. Coco Adel,” she added. “This is Yatsuhashi, you’ve met.”

Robyn’s lips twitched, but she took the offered hand. _Left_ hand, which spoke well of the girl’s ability to read a room and adjust. “Robyn Hill. Of _course_ you did.”

Coco very unsubtly ignored that last bit.

“Robyn Hill,” she repeated. “Aren’t you the one who’s been robbing stagecoaches?”

“Aren’t you the type to get all your information from Atlas?” Robyn rejoined, sugar-sweetness in her voice. “Don’t believe everything you hear. Who took out that Wronghorn, by the way? That was brutal.”

The unassuming little rabbit faunus gave a half-wave. It always _was_ the quiet ones.

“Is your arm all right?” asked Yatsuhashi.

Robyn smiled, but waved him off. “Bullet wound from a month and a half ago,” she said. Since the game was up, she’d finally listened to Pietro and bound it properly in the hope that it would heal. “It happens out here.”

Qrow finished looking over his horse and gave Robyn a brisk nod to confirm he was clear. Robyn spared him a warm smile—Harbinger and his brother-in-law were all he had left of his days as a Huntsman, and while he might not show it openly he doted on the old quarter horse twice as desperately as May had ever loved Huntress.

Turning to the train team, Robyn crossed her arms. Coco wasn’t wrong; they had at best a minute now before the Springers caught up. Already they were nearly within reasonable shooting range—nasty, viciously fast little antelope Grimm, with thick pronged horns and slavering wolflike jaws, long fangs gleaming in the sun as they raced up behind the train. 

“Do you know what triggered this?” she asked, all business.

The little faunus made a face. “We’re starting to suspect it’s our cargo,” she admitted. “Apparently it’s caused a lot of bad blood.”

“I wish Velvet was wrong,” said Coco, sounding disgusted. “I don’t know why anyone would spend that much anger and hatred over theories about some dusty old bones—”

“Fossils,” said the young man with the auburn hair, helpfully—Robyn had to assume he was the one Coco had called Fox, earlier.

“I don’t care what they’re called, no one should be _this_ obsessed with being right about them.”

“The professor’s a very unpleasant man,” Velvet translated. “I’m not surprised his team attracted Grimm.”

Coco fixed Robyn with a suspicious look that burned even through the darkened glass of her spectacles. “What I want to know,” she said, accusing, “is how you knew to come after the express. Unless you were already waiting for it, of course.”

 _“Coco,”_ hissed Velvet. Coco held up a hand before crossing her arms with a commanding finality.

She wasn’t nearly at Robyn’s level yet; but she’d get there, given a decade or two of practice.

Qrow answered for her. “Half those Grimm were attacking Mantle _first,_ kid,” he told her with a schoolmaster’s stern patience.

Coco frowned. “The Junction? They couldn’t be, they came from the wrong direction.”

“Not the Junction.” The snap in Robyn’s voice wasn’t entirely called for, especially considering she had, in fact, robbed a stagecoach recently. 

“The mining town,” Qrow cut in smoothly before the argument could escalate. “Maybe forty miles southwest. When a bunch of Grimm blow through town but don’t stop to do more than hassle folks, there’s probably a bigger target somewhere else. We figured two of us would be enough to make a difference, and we were right.”

“We were _actually_ handling it—never mind,” said Coco. “Wait, you left an entire mining town unguarded on a _hunch?”_

“You know, kid,” said Robyn. “I’m starting to rethink how I feel about you. My team’s still there,” she clarified, since at least the insult came from a good place. “They can handle any stragglers.”

“How sure are you about that?” asked Coco, still skeptical. Qrow, positioned near the door, gave a sharp thirty-second-warning whistle.

Robyn reloaded her pistol and took out the lead Springer without looking up.

“Pretty damn,” she said.

* * *

Olive was starting to think she was in serious trouble.

She _really_ hadn’t intended to be out this late. She’d come into town because they were expecting a letter with some money from Dad’s brother in Atlas, and it had come through; almost five thousand lien. And then the Grimm had attacked, and one of them had gotten into the bank—everyone was fine except for some bad cuts, Miss Greenleaf had taken care of it, but the bank had closed for the day before she got a chance to deposit the money.

And because of the Grimm, even without Robyn or the Sheriff around to call a lockdown people had the sense to stay until they knew the attack had ended.

Which meant Olive, who very badly hadn’t ever wanted to be in this position, was walking home in the dark with five thousand lien in her pocket.

She hadn’t told anyone she had it, she wasn’t stupid, but…

There were two men on horses waiting on top of the rise. She could see them clearly in the light of the full moon, they weren’t hiding. They weren’t the Sheriff’s men, either—no one _liked_ them, but at the moment she’d never wanted to see bleached white leather more in her entire life. And they were _watching_ her.

She felt herself slow down, but it would be dangerous to stop. Or to try to turn back; they could catch her up in half a second.

Besides; she was too scared to turn around, but she could hear slow hoofbeats approaching from behind her, as well. If she just kept moving—her best chance was that she was being paranoid, but somehow she was pretty sure that wasn’t true.

The horseman behind her had caught up; she felt hot breath on the base of her antlers.

“Look straight ahead, Olive,” a woman’s voice murmured, just above a whisper. “Don’t make eye contact, and don’t slow down. You’re safe.”

Before Olive could collapse with relief or turn to get a look at her rescuer, the horse had been reined back slightly, leaving her walking forward alone again. But suddenly, the men on top of the rise weren’t watching _her_ anymore.

She didn’t have mobile ears, like her mother; but she could still track the horse’s hooves as it stopped, then began walking again in a long, unhurried half-circle, keeping a good forty feet apart from the robbers on the hill. Holding them at range—Olive hoped. She kept her eyes on the road as she passed between the two ragged horses. Neither of the men moved. Her breathing was rapid and shallow, her heart pounded like a hare in flight, but she forced herself not to bolt.

The new hoofbeats circled around just as slowly once Olive was on the other side of the hill; it took about half a minute before the black horse returned to her shoulder.

 _“Thank you,_ Robyn,” said Olive, whose racing emotions didn’t prevent her from being polite. “I’m—I didn’t even think you’d be back in Mantle so soon, after—”

She turned and looked up, cutting herself off as Miss Marigold raised a silent eyebrow.

“How...how did you even…” Olive was used to that kind of mind-reading from Miss Hill, but the others had barely ever even _spoken_ to her.

The only answer she got was a friendly kind of smirk and the ghost of a wink in one of those bright golden eyes, before Miss Marigold turned forward again. She rode in a slow, lazy walk beside Olive until they crested the next hill, by which point Olive could see her house. She wasn’t like the Partingtons, who lived an hour’s ride outside of town; she hadn’t realized how much empty scrubland there was between Mantle and home until tonight.

Huntress stopped on top of the hill and swung gracefully across the road at Olive’s back, blue-steel rifle casually pointed back along the road. Olive, starting to tremble now as the adrenaline wore off, fought down the urge to run the rest of the way toward the warm lights of home. 

“Won’t…” She swallowed. “Will _you_ be safe out here if they come back?”

Miss Marigold just gave a low chuckle. When Olive still hesitated, she said, not unkindly, “Joanna’s behind me. Go to bed, kid. Tell your parents not to worry.”

Olive didn’t need any more encouragement; but she paused at the door, glancing over her shoulder.

May Marigold, dark blue and black against the night sky, should have been nearly invisible; but she stood out still, a shadow against stars, settled in with a clear view in every direction as if she fully intended to wait there all night—or until someone else showed up to take the watch. 

Olive let herself in, let her frantic mother drag her into a tight hug, and told her not to worry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly the only thing more ridiculous than the Sheep Wars are the Bone Wars (yes, that's what they're really called) of the 1800s. Y'all have GOT to google that shit. The idea of one (1) pissed-off 1870s paleontologist being filled with enough raw rage and spite to summon a full-scale Grimm attack is in zero ways an exaggeration.


	9. Hero Gets The Girl

There were only so many times a woman could check the fit of a halter before she had to admit she was stalling.

Fiona sighed.

Mutton had long since decided that he was ignoring her; while his crazy owner fussed over the knot at his throatlatch he had buried the rest of his face in a manger and begun stuffing as much hay into it as he could reach—a welcome change from the rough forage he got on his own land.

“It’s not too late to go back,” Fiona pointed out to herself. Mutton’s big, dismissive flicking ears told her what he thought of that idea. She pinned her own ears back and him and turned to her dog. “Forrest, back me up.”

Forrest, big tongue lolling sideways, scratched himself enthusiastically and lay down under Mutton’s manger where he was out of the way and safe from deadly hooves.

“Traitor,” Fiona muttered.

This would be easier if she could honestly claim that she didn’t think Robyn ever wanted to see her again. She  _ knew  _ that wasn’t true. Maybe Fiona had read far too much into what her friend intended as a platonic, safely sisterly love; maybe she hadn’t. Maybe Robyn’s feelings were hurt by the realization that Fiona wanted more from her than she’d offered, maybe they weren’t, maybe Robyn actually felt the same way...Maybe she’d ruined any chance by panicking, and maybe she hadn’t.

But regardless, she  _ knew  _ Robyn. And Robyn really would be hurt if Fiona kept avoiding her forever.

What would  _ that  _ look like? That if Fiona couldn’t have what some tiny desperate part of herself wanted more than air to breathe, she wasn’t interested in Robyn’s company? Nothing could be further from the truth, she owed it to their friendship—and to Robyn herself—to at least make an effort. 

She could just be  _ normal. _ She could pull back a bit, treat Robyn just like anyone else did, without being cruel and disrespectful enough to suddenly pretend she didn’t care.

Doing anything else would make it seem like this was all just some kind of—elaborate seduction attempt, wouldn’t it?

So it would actually be more awful to stay away longer. It had already been months. She owed Robyn better than this, and frankly if she stayed alone out there any longer she was going to start carving faces in random rocks and naming them instead of just holding entire conversations with a stubborn, uncooperative ass and also her donkey.

_ “Yes, _ I’m talking about you,” she snapped. Forrest yawned and paid no mind to either the accusation or the non sequitur. “Fine. I’m  _ going.” _

Forrest wagged his tail and settled down for a nap. Mutton, tail swishing enthusiastically and head now completely vanished into the hay, ignored her.

She took a deep breath and pushed the door of the stable open again. She was immediately almost crushed by a trio of strange men trying to cross the threshold in the opposite direction.

“Up. Sorry, ma’am,” the nearest said with careless ease, backing his big chestnut off half a step and twitching his hat in Fiona’s direction as she slipped past them with an equally quick nod of acknowledgement.

That should have been the end of it; but one of his buddies stopped to take a second look. These were passers-through, cattlemen; ranch hands on their way to or from a drive, not SDC guards. Sometimes, that was a good thing; Company goons tended to think of themselves as above the law because they generally were. But the SDC men also had to stay in the same area for a while, and could only afford to make so many enemies.

The man, not young but not old either, one hand on the lead line of a pretty dun mustang he didn’t deserve, gave Fiona a quick once-over. He caught that she dressed like a stockhand; she watched his eyes flick between her ears, the collie she’d just left behind, and the damning crook in her right hand, and his lip curled in a sneer.

Fiona did not have the time or energy to deal with this tonight.

“Your kind oughta learn to  _ stay out of the way,”  _ was all he said, going out of his own to hit her with a shoulder-check in passing.

Somehow, the curve of Fiona’s crook dropped down and hooked around his ankle as he walked away, nearly causing him to faceplant into the muck heap.

“A civilized person would have  _ gone around,” _ she pointed out. 

“Ease off,” snapped the man with the chestnut mare. Fiona bared her teeth, fully ready to stand her ground—but she wasn’t the one he was glaring at. “Don’t start trouble, there won’t be any.”

The asshole rolled his eyes, but didn’t say anything more. Fiona, not in the mood to push her luck any more than she just had, turned and walked away. For the second time in as many minutes she almost walked into someone, but for once, Marrow Amin wasn’t the most irritating man she’d come chest to forehead with in a month.

“Everything all right over here?” he asked, directing the question to Fiona but looking in the direction of the stables. “Because I was going to come and handle that, but to be honest? I’d rather just get some eggs and bacon and go to sleep.”

Fiona snorted. “It’s nothing new. Didn’t Robyn ban you people?”

“Didn’t you  _ shoot  _ her?”

Unable to deny it, Fiona just narrowed her eyes slightly while Marrow grinned.

“As it happens,” he said with an overdone bow,  _ “I _ have been granted special permission on the grounds that I keep Miss Marigold on her toes. Now, I don’t know what that  _ means, _ but hey, it’s cheaper than the Apricot and no one brings dog whistles in.”

“There’s that,” Fiona allowed. Her new friends from the stables had put their horses up and were letting themselves into the saloon with little more than a single dirty look in Fiona’s general direction. If she was going to slip in unnoticed…

As if reading her mind, Marrow stepped back and gave a joking half-bow, sweeping his arm out. “After you.”

It was just about perfect. Fiona entered mostly hidden behind the newcomers, and slipped off to the side as Robyn called over to greet them. She thought she’d made it in unnoticed until Robyn stuttered to a stop halfway through rattling off prices.

Fiona hoped her wave came off as appropriately apologetic. She slipped into a neglected corner so Robyn could focus on her other guests, and her hands actually shook with the force of her relief at the glowing smile Robyn sent her way before turning back to the cattlemen. Marrow tossed her a faux salute in passing and received a casual shove in return.

Taking a shaky breath and letting it out slowly, Fiona let herself relax. They would get through this. She just...had to demonstrate that she wasn’t going to make this weird.

* * *

“She’s gonna make this weird, isn’t she,” said Joanna. It wasn’t a question.

May, who was trying to monitor some very nice quail pies that were going to make her  _ lose her shit _ if allowed to burn, leaned back enough to glance up to the front and gave a low whistle.

It wasn’t immediately obvious unless you knew Robyn as well as they did; she’d always been good at hiding her insecurities. But that didn’t mean they weren’t there; and while some of the stiffness in her movement  _ could  _ be lingering pain from that mostly-healed arm wound, it...you know,  _ wasn’t. _

May heaved a very long sigh.

“All right,” she said. “Watch those and take them out once the tops are golden brown. Not dark, Joanna. Golden.”

Joanna rolled her eyes. “Got it.”

May made peace with the fiery demise of her pies and crossed to the main saloon.

Robyn was pouring whiskey with admirable calm when May appeared next to her, leaning back against the polished bar on her elbows.

“Do you remember our deal?” she asked conversationally.

“Hello, May.”

“Robyn. I mean it. It’s a very simple deal.”

“I remember.”

May examined the nails on one hand. “I run your kitchen,” she reminded Robyn. “I organize your paperwork, I handle your finances, I run any errands you ask. And in return, I am never— _ never, _ Robyn, this is in my contract. I have this in  _ writing, _ Robyn—required to be polite to your customers.”

Robyn fixed a Look on her. “Is this  _ going  _ somewhere? I have a lot on my mind right now.”

For several long moments, heart aching, May just watched her. Finally she shook her head, stood up straight, and plucked the glass from Robyn’s fingers.

_ “Don’t _ say I never did anything nice for you,” she ordered. Then, with a nod toward the far corner: “Go get your girl.”

Robyn stared, taken aback—stared for long enough that May, filling pint glasses and avoiding eye contact, very nearly threatened to rescind the offer. When she glanced up, however, Robyn’s expression had turned so soft that she couldn’t even say it as a joke.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

Between the two of them constantly stealing glances at each other all night it was an actual miracle that Robyn, brushing careful fingers over her shoulder to get her attention, somehow still managed to catch Fiona by surprise. 

They both laughed, soft and nervous; Robyn set a glass of whiskey down and put a hand on the back of an empty chair. May could read lips, but didn’t really need to.

_ Could I join you? _

Leaving them to it, May turned back to where Marrow was patiently waiting at the bar and mentally kicked herself for not realizing who her next customer would be before gallantly stepping in to save Robyn from herself. Still, she  _ had  _ offered.

“What can I get you,” she asked without enthusiasm.

Marrow’s good cheer was undimmable. “Just the usual,” he said. “Wow. You must  _ really  _ be desperate for them to work things out.”

Regretting every decision in her life that had just led her to promise not to flip off Robyn’s customers, May grabbed a glass and then paused, fixing him with a look.

“You  _ hate  _ your usual,” she pointed out. “You only get it so the others lay off you. C’mon, Wags, what do you  _ actually  _ want.”

Marrow hesitated. A quick glance toward the back of the room—Robyn’s chin was resting delicately on three fingers, rapt attention focused entirely on whatever Fiona was saying. The fingers of her left hand just barely brushed the back of Fiona’s right, and how anyone could  _ eat  _ with those two around May had no idea.

Meanwhile, Marrow seemed to have come to a decision. Still halting, as if expecting to be mocked for it—which, all right, fine, May was self-aware, but _ still _ —he asked more than answered “...Mint julep?”

May suppressed her instinctive grin in favor of a dramatic feigned gasp. She put a hand over her heart and took half a step back.

_ “Well,” _ she exclaimed. “Alert the papers, the man has a  _ personality. _ Someone stop him.”

“Ha, ha,” said Marrow, who was visibly relaxing as Robyn idly fiddled with Fiona’s belled earing, and May studiously ignored this to pull out a bourbon glass and sugar for him. “Wait, you actually have mint?”

“We serve a lot of lamb,” said May. “For some reason. No ice, though.”

Marrow chuckled and toasted her, taking a sip of his drink in exactly the manner the rest of the Sheriff’s party would never, ever let him live down.

“Really.” He grinned. “Can’t imagine what reason  _ that  _ could possibly…”

He trailed off as ripples of laughter, cheers, and whistles started to build across the saloon.

_ “About damn time!” _ called Qrow.

Robyn, for once, didn’t even seem to hear him. She had the trailing ends of Fiona’s bolero tie wound firmly around the fingers of her right hand; and whatever hesitation she’d been stewing with was gone. She’d used the grip to pull Fiona in,  _ hard, _ her free hand braced against the back of a chair for leverage.

Nor did Fiona look like she intended to let Robyn get away any time soon. She’d gone boneless, letting Robyn arch her into the kiss, and willingly followed when Robyn pulled her practically into her lap by the thin tie. But even from this angle May could see that Fiona’s left hand had crept up Robyn’s chest and under the kerchief tied loosely around her throat; palm out, all four fingers curled under and around the knot, Fiona’s knuckles stood out white with the strength of her grip.

Good girl.

May gave a sharp cab whistle.  _ “Robyn!” _ she yelled over the general chaos of teasing and delighted well-wishes. “I have an actual job!”

_ “In a minute, _ Marigold!” Robyn called back. She had finally managed to settle Fiona on her knee and was making full use of the better angle.

“I quit!”

“Mmm. No, you don’t.” Still, Robyn nudged Fiona back to her feet and stood.

Fiona didn’t miss a beat. “Excuse me, Miss Hill.” Even May had to laugh at Robyn’s expression as a shepherd’s crook tucked itself gently around the back of her neck; Fiona raised a challenging eyebrow and gave a short, sharp tug. “Get back here. I wasn’t finished.”

In terms of a summons, May had to admit she couldn’t compete with that.

“Wow,” observed Marrow. “So,  _ they’re _ gonna be totally insufferable now.”

May glared a warning in his direction. “They deserve each other.”

“Never said they didn’t,” was his easy reply. “I’m just  _ saying.” _

Much to the raucous delight of half of Mantle, Robyn had gotten her little revenge by boosting Fiona up to sit on the table in order to combat their difference in height. Fiona, breathless and laughing, protested, “Robyn! People  _ eat  _ here!”

“In a minute,” Robyn tossed back with a roguish grin. Fiona flushed pink at the implication; but for all that she couldn’t resist a double entendre, when Robyn kissed her again it was soft and careful, both hands framing her face like something delicate. Tender and sure like desert primrose.

May rubbed both temples.

“I need a drink,” she decided.

Marrow patted her on the shoulder and slid her most of a mint julep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [wakes up ten days later covered in fic] what happened. where am i


End file.
